The Great Bath

4,500-year-old ritual bath — the most famous structure at Moenjodaro

The Great Bath is the most famous structure at Moenjodaro and one of the most remarkable ancient structures in South Asia. Measuring 12 metres by 7 metres, with walls still standing to nearly a metre, it was built around 2600 BC with a sophisticated waterproofing system of bitumen-sealed bricks. Steps at either end lead down into the pool. Around it ran a corridor and a series of smaller rooms — perhaps changing rooms, perhaps the quarters of priests.

What makes the Great Bath striking is not just its age but its sophistication. The Indus Valley Civilization built public infrastructure at a scale and quality that would not be matched in much of the world for another two thousand years. Stand at the edge and consider that the people who used this bath were contemporaries of the Old Kingdom Egyptians and the Early Dynastic Mesopotamians — and arguably building more equitably, with no palaces and no apparent kings.

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A story
The Great Bath was waterproofed using bitumen — a natural tar — applied to the brick walls and floor to make them watertight. This was sophisticated civil engineering for 2500 BC. Yet despite extensive excavation, no one has determined with certainty what the bath was for: ritual purification is the leading theory, but the Indus script remains undecoded, and the people of Moenjodaro left no written explanations.