The Pashupati Seal of Mohenjo-daro 2500–1900 BCE

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The Pashupati Seal is one of the most famous and intriguing artifacts discovered from the Indus Valley Civilization, which flourished around 2500–1900 BCE in what is now Pakistan and northwest India.

The Pashupati seal (also Mahayogi seal, Proto-Śiva seal the adjective “so-called” sometimes applied to “Pashupati“), is a steatite seal which was uncovered in Mohenjo-daro, now in modern day Pakistan, a major urban site of the Indus Valley civilisation (“IVC”).

It has one of the more complicated designs in the thousands of seals found from the Indus Valley civilization, and is unusual in having a human figure as the main and largest element; in most seals this is an animal. It had been claimed to be one of the earliest depictions of the Hindu god Shiva—”Pashupati” (Lord of animals) being one of his epithets, or a “proto-Shiva” deity.