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Pakistan: The 'Dancing Girl of Mohenjo Daro', Indus Valley Civilisation, Sindh, c. 2600 BCE

Mohenjo-daro (lit. Mound of the Dead), situated in the province of Sindh, Pakistan, was one of the largest settlements of the ancient Indus Valley Civilization. Built around 2600 BC, it was one of the world's earliest major urban settlements, existing at the same time as the civilizations of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Crete. The archaeological ruins of the city are designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

A bronze statuette dubbed the 'Dancing Girl', 10.8 cm high and some 4,500 years old, was found in Mohenjo-daro in 1926. In 1973, British archaeologist Mortimer Wheeler described the item as his favorite statuette:

'There is her little Balochi-style face with pouting lips and insolent look in the eyes. She's about fifteen years old I should think, not more, but she stands there with bangles all the way up her arm and nothing else on. A girl perfectly, for the moment, perfectly confident of herself and the world. There's nothing like her, I think, in the world'.

John Marshall, another archeologist at Mohenjo-daro, described the figure as 'a young girl, her hand on her hip in a half-impudent posture, and legs slightly forward as she beats time to the music with her legs and feet'.

The archaeologist Gregory Possehl said of the statuette, 'We may not be certain that she was a dancer, but she was good at what she did and she knew it'.