Harappan 'non-texts'

[Stephen Hodge]

I think there are difficulties in arguing one way or another for the
existence of an extensive but lost IV literature, but I wonder if the
IV script was used in a similar way to the NW European runes and the
Irish ogham script.   The majority of these inscriptions are quite
short -- mainly ownership tags, short invocations to the gods and the
like.  I have not heard any theories that the Norse people wrote
lengthy texts in the script but they did, of course, have a great
bardic tradition of oral poetry and sagas.  What they did write was on
pieces of bone, wood, metal and stone but there is no evidence, as far
as I know, of books per se.  In the fullness of time, if and when the
IV inscriptions are deciphered, it will probably turn out that the
content of the IV written material is much the same kind of thing the
Vikings wrote.

Best wishes,
Stephen Hodge