Since the Pinle (Mongmaw) city is an invaluable ancient city that can reveal the links to the Pyu culture in Myanmar, a site museum should be constructed to showcase the artefacts discovered in this city, U Kyaw Myo Win, director of the Department of Archaeology and National Museum (Bagan Branch) recommended on his Facebook page.
Located in the Kyaukse plain and designated as a Pyu cultural heritage according to the surveys and excavations following a satellite image in 1965, the Pinle (Mongmaw) Pyu ancient city, which can be said to be the most recent city among ancient ones, is less well known and the Archaeology Department has been carrying out research and excavations since 1978-1979.
During the excavation work led by a researcher from Mandalay Archaeological Branch in 2005 in a field adjacent to the north of Nantawya Pagoda, circular stakes made of ancient bricks, which were supposed to drive in wooden pillars, were unearthed from a depth of over one foot, U Kyaw Myo Win wrote.
As no report was found on this excavation, another team, including U Kyaw Myo Win, has resumed this research since 2008. After completing the excavation of 12 mounds up to Mound No 21 by 2010, they have successfully made a digital GIS map of the Pinle (Mongmaw) ancient city based on a GPS survey, he added.
The city wall, about six miles in circumference, looks like an orange, and it survives to this day in a discontinuous line pattern with some parts on the surface and some below the surface. Villages in the area of this ancient city, such as Oohnepok, Mongmaw and Kanswe, have engulfed some parts of the Pinle (Mongmaw) with their new houses and extended wards to accommodate the growing population so that it may pose many more difficulties with time for incomplete research work in this ancient city, he pointed out.
The Mandalay branch has started unearthing Mound No 22 for about one month and has discovered a never-seen Pyu-era big pagoda, which is 120 feet long, 90 feet wide and about 17 feet high. In addition, enormous staircases, the architecture which designed the bricks as needed, the unprecedented three-colour painted urns, and a small silver pagoda at the centre of the great pagoda were unearthed, he said. — MT/ZN
