The script has remained undeciphered for more than a century. Carved stone seal from the Indus Valley civilization (ca. 2,500 B.C.E.). Photo by DEA/G. Nimatallah/De Agostini via Getty Images.

The Indus Valley Civilization was the largest of the ancient civilizations with a population of over 5 million people, over 1500 sites spanning an area of over 1 million square kilometers full of ...

ART OF THE FIRST CITIES: The Third Millennium B.C. from the Mediterranean to the Indus Joan Aruz, . . Yale Univ., $75 (564pp) ISBN 978-0-300-09883-9 ...