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In flood-stricken Pakistan, where an unprecedented monsoon season has killed hundreds of people, the rains now threaten a famed archaeological site dating back 4,500 years.

The ruins of Mohenjo-daro, located in southern Sindh province near the Indus River, and a Unesco world heritage site, are considered among the best preserved urban settlements in south Asia. They were discovered in 1922, and mystery still surrounds the disappearance of its civilisation, which coincided with those of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia.

The recent flooding has not directly hit Mohenjo-daro but the record-breaking rains have inflicted damage on the ruins, said Ahsan Abbasi, the site’s curator. “Several big walls which were built nearly 5,000 years ago have collapsed because of the monsoon rains,” Abbasi said.

He said dozens of construction workers under the supervision of archaeologists had started the repair work. Abbasi did not give an estimated cost of the damage.

The site’s landmark “Buddhist stupa”, a large hemispherical structure associated with worship, meditation and burial, remains intact, Abbasi said. But the downpours have damaged some outer walls and also some larger walls separating individual rooms or chambers.

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Sivan, the first to emerge from the indus waters of chaos and the first to bathe in it. The nameless horned god from the indus river valley, Sivan is an enigmatic and mysterious figure. No readable records survive detailing their existence, much less any of the Indus River Valley’s religion. Though the reconstruction efforts have been similarly limited, researchers have been able to provide a possible primitive framework of the mystifying mythology.

The basis for the belief system is thought to reside in water, possibly seen as an encompassing life force and/or the primordial waters of chaos. The horned god himself is a ubiquitous feature in art from the Indus River Valley culture, commonly accompanied by animals like the bull, Rhinoceros, elephant, tiger, goats, fish and other animals, sometimes even depicted with plants as well. In particular the horned god was heavily associated with the bull, gharial and the unicorn-like mythic beast. Sivan was also likely related to the mother goddess, likely a wife or consort of some kind, statuettes of this goddess were plentiful though unlike the horned god her possible appearance in the culture’s seals cannot be determined, possibly being depict as a half tiger god.

One seal in particular shows a horned beast emerging from a wavy star-like shape, in my interpretation this could be a record of a cosmogenic myth of the horned god emerging from chaos, however this cannot be proven.

Similarly another series of seals seem to tell a story as well, in which two men confront a woman, two tigers then appear and force the men up trees before another man holds back the two beasts. The man could’ve been a representation of Sivan, as other seals depicting these events show the man as having hooves and horns. However any conclusion gathered is entirely conjecture, as these scenes could be totally unrelated events.

The horned god himself was likely a god of nature, a pervasive life force that fueled living beings.

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The name I gave the Indus River Valley’s horned god, Sivan, is another rendering of the Hindu god Shiva. An older name used by Dravidians, Sivan carries the “An” termination seen in both Dravidian and Tamil languages. This etymology is seen in ancient Tamil literature through the name Āndivanam, an ancient form of Shiva. While some contest the idea, It has been greatly interpreted over the centuries that the horned god of the Indus River Valley was possibly a “prototype shiva” or a predecessor whose worship evolved into the Shiva we have today. Shiva’s equivalent and manifestation in Vedic mythology, Rudra, is believed to have most likely have been derived and fused with the pre-Vedic Shiva and maybe the horned god.

Another of the trimutri, Vishnu, may in some form also originate from Sivan. Narayana, the name Vishnu has while resting on the cosmic waters, has the same entomological An as Āndivanam, likely descending from it. This tracks with Sivan’s association with water, as the many public and private baths were found to house many seals and depictions of animals and the horned god, These replaced the typical temples as places of worship, and along with the lingam-esque phalic stones were also a means of worship. This water centric worship could’ve carried over to the Vedic Soma and Varuna as well as the modern Hindu cosmic ocean Karanodaka.

The seals detailing the Horned god’s combat against the tigers had been noted by researchers as being heavily reminiscent of the Sumerian Gilgamesh, possibly indicating a possible development or the sharing of an archetype. However, this figure may not have even been the horned god, as while some depictions do have horns, others don’t. Even the gender of the figure is debated, as some believe that it’s actually the goddess instead.

The Indus Sivan may have shared a similar role to modern Hindu Brahman, an ultimate universal force, a concept that is directly shared by the modern Dravidians, who view Shiva as the supreme Para Brahman.

The Dravidian’s found in southern India are known to descend from the Indus River Valley civilization, with many researchers believing that their mythology could’ve retained significant elements from the Indus River Valley civilization.

The Indus River Valley factually predates the oncoming of Vedic Mythology and the likely arrival of the Proto-indo-Europeans. In all likelihood the Vedic and later Hindu mythos likely formed out of a cultural fusion between Proto-indo-European elements and the Indus River Valley mythos, gathering and absorbing the other splintered tribal traditions of India.

Some have posited an even earlier origin for this “proto-shiva”. The Bhimbetka rock shelters contain numerous pieces of cave art, with the oldest of them dating to around 10,000 BC. One of them, though very faded, seems to represent a figure holding a trident staff. Some have claimed that this figure actually represents Shiva or the “proto-Shiva”, pointing to the trident shared by the two with further evidence in the presence of other dancing figures. However critics instead insist that this is taken out of context with the rest of the nearby art, as it likely represented a hunter instead.

It should be noted that all of this is simply conjecture and speculation. Due to their complete lack of writing and enigmatic archaeological evidence, no hypothesis is concrete.