Indus Valley Trade with Ancient Egypt

they had trade for sure with mesopotamia, i guess they could also have it with egypt

I wonder if any comparisons have been made between the architecture of the Indus Valley civilization to that of Mesepotamia and the Nile. Could the Indus Valley Civilization have been a colony of the ancient Egyptians? Or even vice versa?

What's amazing about the Indus valley civilization (The Harappans) is that their language has yet to be deciphered. They found Roman coins in one city on the river.

    We know for certain that IVC had trade with Sumer. However no trace of a direct trade between IVC and Egypt has been found. If there was any trade between Egypt and IVC it had to be indirect i.e IVC goods were traded with Sumer and then Sumer traded them with Egypt. However since Egypt was located in Africa which had abudant supplies of Gold and Precious stones there was no need to trade with IVC for these commodities. 

there is a theory that Nefertiti was of Indian descent, Ill try finding my sources tomorrow. 

Let's just call it Indus instead of Pakistan

Originally posted by MarcoPolo Indus is Pakistan... just as the Nile is Egypt

I knew something was wrong when I read this thread... I thought the Indus was situated in Brazil and the Nile was located in Russia. Looks like I need to study my geography.


Edited by Darius of Parsa - 12-Jul-2008 at 05:02

Originally posted by Darius of Parsa Originally posted by MarcoPolo Indus is Pakistan... just as the Nile is Egypt   I knew something was wrong when I read this thread... I thought the Indus was situated in Brazil and the Nile was located in Russia. Looks like I need to study my geography.

this is the chronic problem with certain pakistani mods and their so called expert of south asia matters , they want to erase from their past history name india ,indic,indus. if any body tries to correct them he is immediately banned. so the same fate is awaiting amar and darius of persia. 

I'm inclined to agree that Indus is, well, INDus - though it has absolutely nothing to do with the modern political entities called India and Pakistan. India is not just a political designation though, it's also a geographic one, and typically we go by geographic designations (not modern political entities). For instance, we call Celtiberians, Celtiberians, not "ancient Spaniards". The geographic designation for the region the Indus were in is India - Pakistan is not a geographic term. Or, to be more blunt, there's no such thing as "ancient Pakistan" because Pakistan quite simply didn't exist that far back. The subcontinent - not the nation - of India, however, did.

Back to the topic of the thread; I don't know if Egypt was trading with the Indus or not (they certainly never settled there!) but there was long-distance trade over equally long distances long before Egypt had emerged as a unified kingdom (or even before the Upper and Lower Kingdom emerged). During the Neolithic, and throughout the Chalcolithic, inhabitants of the Nile banks were getting obsidian (and other stones - jade, I think?) from as far afied as Afghanistan. Probably not directly though but through many intermediaries, the same way Romans were getting silk from China.

Edited by edgewaters - 24-Nov-2008 at 01:18

Originally posted by edgewaters I'm inclined to agree that Indus is, well, INDus - though it has absolutely nothing to do with the modern political entities called India and Pakistan. India is not just a political designation though, it's also a geographic one, and typically we go by geographic designations (not modern political entities). For instance, we call Celtiberians, Celtiberians, not "ancient Spaniards". The geographic designation for the region the Indus were in is India - Pakistan is not a geographic term. Or, to be more blunt, there's no such thing as "ancient Pakistan" because Pakistan quite simply didn't exist that far back. The subcontinent - not the nation - of India, however, did.

Have to disagree with you.

Indus Valley is pretty much the region now known as Pakistan. Pakistani people have ancestral links to that land for as far as history has been recorded in the region.

Indus Valley = Pakistan.

You cant call them Indians, because India didnt exist back then either, and Indus Valley people didnt refer to themselves as Indian, neither do the Indian people have any ancestral links to Indus Valley, i.e Pakistan.
You have to use the ancient name, or the modern name.

Referring to it as India is geographically wrong because India doesnt not refer to British Indian empire anymore. Certain people here would love to disagree on that though.

Using the modern Geographic name for a region is not a political agenda. However, making references to the British Indian Empire is a political agenda if I ever saw one. If you are so keen on using Geographic terms, Indus already is; what about Punjab and Sindh?: Using such a massive region called India as a reference is absurd in many ways. Why not call it Ancient Asia and get it over with?