Type: Archaeological Site - Settlement
Province: Khyber Pakhtunkhwa
District: Haripur
Period: Historic
Relative Chronology: 1st - 5th Century CE
Description: The city site of Sirsukh is located about 4 ½ km from Taxila Museum towards northwest off Taxila Road near Marchabad village. It is located more than 1 ½ km north-northeast from Sirkap.
According to Sir John Marshall, Sirsukh is a slightly irregular rectangle, measuring nearly 1372 m along its northern and southern sides and 920 m along its eastern and western. On the south and west a considerable area outside the city’s walls is enclosed in a bend of the Lundi nalla. On the south and east sides of the city the mounds which cove the ruins of the ancient ramparts still rise clear to view above the surrounding fields, but the northern and western walls have almost entiredly disappeared. Marshall excavated the area near the southeastern corner of the city of Sir sukh and exposed the wall constructed of rough rubble faced with neatly fitting limestone massonry of the heavy diaper type with a thickness of about 5 ½ meters.
Semicircular bastions of a little less than 3 meters diameter are provided along the outer curtain of the wall at regular interval. Access to the interior is provided by a narrow passage carried through the thickness of the wall. Both the bastions and the wall were furnished with loopholes at a height of rather less than 1 ½ m above the old floor level. In the bastions, these loopholes are splayed slightly towards the outside and are closed on the outer face of the wall with triangular tops. The walls are faced with the heavy diaper masonry and pierced with loopholes for the use of defenders standing on the ground-floor. The bastions are semi-circular in plan instead of rectangular and hollow within instead of solid. The bastions were divided into two or more stories. Since no excavations could be undertaken at this highly important city site of the Kushans, we have to bank upon the limited excavations of Marshall for details. According to him his own very limited excavation disclosed the presence of a large building which, when fully cleared, may prove to be of some interest. The remains comprise parts of two courts with attached chambers, a larger one to the west and a smalelr one to the east, with a passage and a row of chambers between them. The foundations of the walls are limestone rubble, but above ground-level the walls are faced with the strong semi-ashlar masonry. The wall stretching across the north side of the big court appears to be the foundation of a raised plinth, which probably supported a pillared veranda with chambers.
Latitude: 33.778116667
Longitude: 72.853900000
Ownership: Federal Government
Legal Status: Protected by The Antiquity Act 1975 (As amended in 1992)
Title of Publication: Archaeological Survey in Hazara Division, District Haripur (Campaign 2007-08)
Published In: Frontier Archaeology, Vol VI
Year of Publication: 2016
Bibliography/Reference: Khan, Saleh Muhammad et.al
