An AI-generated image is falsely shared as a real photo of a Pashupati seal from the Indus Valley Civilisation period

A post on social media claims to show a photo of a Pashupati Seal from the Indus Valley Civilisation. It allegedly dates back to 2500 BCE and features a ‘seated, possibly three-headed figure often interpreted as a “Proto-Shiva” motif,’ which was apparently uncovered during the excavations in Mohenjo-Daro in the late 1920s. We will fact-check this claim through this article.

An archived version of this post can be found here. 

Claim: The photo shows an Indus Valley Civilization-era Pashupati Seal featuring a Proto-Shiva motif. It dates back to 2500BCE.

Fact: This is an AI-generated image, not the original Indus Valley Civilization Pashupati seal/ Proto-Siva seal found in Mohenjo Daro. Hence, the claim made in the post is False.

To verify the claim, we searched the internet using relevant keywords and found a photo of the Indus Valley Civilisation Pashupati seal/ Proto-Siva seal, discovered in Mohenjo-Daro. This is available on the ‘Indian Culture’ website, which is an official government of India website.

The artefact shown in the viral photo is quite different from the one on the Indian Culture website. As per the description provided for this photo, the artefact is ‘commonly recognised as the Pasupati Seal or Proto-Siva seal. It was excavated at Mohenjo-Daro within the Indus valley, which is dated to approximately 2500 BC.’ Furthermore, we conducted a reverse image search using the photo, and we found the same photo on Columbia University’s website.

Then, to learn more about the viral photo, we ran a reverse image search. However, we did not find this photo on any official Indian Government website or in media reports claiming to be a Proto-Shiva motif from the Indus Valley Civilisation era. Suspecting that it was an AI-generated image, we ran the image through AI content detection tools, such as Google’s Synth ID detector and Hive. Both the tools identified it as an AI-generated image.

To sum up, an AI-generated image is falsely shared as a real photo of a Pashupati seal from the Indus Valley Civilisation period.