The Great Bath of Mohenjo-daro: What It Was

The Great Bath of Mohenjo-daro is a brick-lined tank about 12 metres long, 7 metres wide and 2.4 metres deep, built around 4,500 years ago on the citadel mound. It is often called the earliest public water tank of the ancient world. Nobody knows for certain what it was for, but most scholars think it was used for ritual bathing.

It is the one structure at the site that visitors nearly always ask to see first, and it is smaller and plainer than the name suggests. This guide explains how it was built, the competing ideas about its purpose, and what you will actually find when you stand at the edge of it.

What is the Great Bath?

It is a rectangular pool set inside a larger building complex on the raised western mound of the city. A corridor of small rooms runs along the sides, and two flights of steps lead down into the water, one from the north and one from the south. A low ledge stands at the bottom of the steps.

The measurements you will see quoted (12 by 7 metres, 2.4 metres deep) refer to the tank itself, not the whole complex. That makes it roughly the size of a modest modern swimming pool, though considerably deeper at one end than a family pool would be.

The tank was found in 1926 during the early excavations under John Marshall's Archaeological Survey of India. The excavators named it at once, because nothing else in a Bronze Age city looked like a public bath.

How was the Great Bath built?

The engineering is the real reason the structure is famous. The builders had to hold a lot of water in a city on a floodplain, and they did it with several layers.

• Fine-fitted fired bricks. The bricks of the walls and floor were cut and laid tightly, on edge in places, with gypsum plaster between them.
• A layer of bitumen. A thick coat of natural tar was laid along the sides, and in the floor between two skins of brick, to stop water seeping through. This waterproofing is why the tank survives in such good shape.
• A sloping floor. The floor falls gently towards an outlet in the south-west corner.
• A corbelled drain. The outlet leads into a tall drain, roofed with bricks laid in overlapping courses (a corbelled arch), which carried the used water out and away from the mound.
• Nearby wells. Fresh water probably came from wells in the complex. Rain may have added to it, but no inlet drain has been identified.

Small sockets at the edges of the steps are thought to have held wooden treads. Wood has not survived, so this remains an inference.

What was the Great Bath used for?

The short answer is that we do not know. There is no inscription that explains it, since the Indus script cannot be read, and no written record from any neighbour describes the city.

The most widely held view is that it was a ritual bath. The archaeologist Jonathan Mark Kenoyer has written that most scholars agree the tank was used for special religious functions in which water was used to purify and renew those who bathed. Ritual bathing is important in many later South Asian traditions, and that continuity is part of the argument.

Other ideas exist. Some suggest it was a place for public gatherings around water, or that it held a stored supply for the citadel. A building across the street, with several rooms and verandas, has been tentatively called a "College of Priests", but that name is a guess and not an identified function.

The honest position is that the design points to ritual or communal use, and that nothing so far proves a specific ceremony.

What can visitors still see?

You can see the tank, its two staircases, the bitumen-lined sides where they survive, the surrounding rooms and the outlet drain. The floor and the side walls have been conserved, in part with modern replacement bricks, so what you see is a mixture of original and restored work. Look for the difference in colour and finish if you want to tell them apart.

Expect to look at the tank from its edge rather than walk in it, and follow any instructions from site staff. The Great Bath sits on the same mound as the ruined Buddhist stupa, so most visitors see both on one walk.

Photographs work best in the early morning or late afternoon, when the low sun brings out the brick courses. Midday glare on pale ground flattens everything, and Larkana is very hot for much of the year. Our guide to the best time to visit Mohenjo-daro covers the seasons.

For entry fees, see our Mohenjo-daro ticket price guide. For the wider story of the city, see Mohenjo-daro history.

Is the Great Bath worth seeing?

Yes, if you accept it for what it is. It is not large or decorated, and someone expecting a monument will be disappointed. What makes it worth the walk is the workmanship: the tightness of the brickwork, the waterproofing, and the drain that still shows how the water left the tank.

It is at its best with a little background. Read this page beforehand, then spend ten or fifteen minutes on the rim, follow the drain round to the outside, and look across to the other buildings on the mound. If you have limited time at the site, the Great Bath and the citadel mound are the part to prioritise over the lower town.

Check the security advice first

Larkana lies in Sindh north of Nawabshah, and the UK government advises against all but essential travel to that part of the province. Pakistani visitors still go to Mohenjo-daro, but check local news and current police advice before you set out. Overseas visitors should read the UK travel advice for Pakistan because travelling against it can void insurance.

Frequently asked questions