The Dancing Girl
A bronze girl, ten centimetres tall, standing with hand on hip, her arm covered in bangles.
The Dancing Girl is a bronze statuette, about ten and a half centimetres high, cast by the lost-wax method and found at Mohenjo-daro in 1926. She stands naked, one hand on her hip, the other arm covered in bangles from shoulder to wrist, her chin raised with an air of confidence.
Mortimer Wheeler called her a girl perfectly confident of herself and the world. She shows the skill of Indus bronze-casters and the bangles that are still worn across the region.
At Partition she went to India and is kept in the National Museum in New Delhi.
More from the Indus
The world's first great public water tank, sealed with bitumen on the citadel of Mohenjo-daro.
A bearded man in a trefoil-patterned cloak, carved in steatite: the face of the Indus civilisation.
A horned figure seated cross-legged among wild animals: the most debated image of the Indus.
The commonest Indus seal: a one-horned bull before a ritual stand, with a line of script.
Long red beads drilled through with stone drills and etched with white designs, prized from the Indus to Ur.
Polished cubes of chert made to one standard from the Ravi to the Arabian Sea.
Two small stone torsos from Harappa so lifelike that their date is still argued.
Little bullock carts, whistles, rattles and animals with nodding heads: the playthings of Indus children.
_and_Dancing_Girl_or_The_Amazons_of_Ranjit_Singh%27_by_an_unknown_artist,_ca.1840%E2%80%9350.jpg)
A Man with a Huqqah (smoking pipe) and Dancing Girl or The Amazons of Ranjit Singh' by…Lahore Museum · photo Wikimedia Commons (Wikimedia Commons) ↗
The Dancing GirlNational Museum, New Delhi · photo Amrit Sufi (Wikimedia Commons) · CC BY ↗