It is a riddle that has confounded scholars for over a century. And now it carries a handsome cash prize: $1 million for anyone who can decipher the script of the ancient Indus Valley civilization.

Relatively little is known about the creators of the script, who built a sprawling urban system about 5,000 years ago across what is modern-day India, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Excavations at more than 2,000 sites have unearthed a wealth of artifacts. But until the civilization’s script can be read, its language, culture and religion, as well as the history of its rise and fall, will remain shrouded in mystery.

The prize, announced by M.K. Stalin, the chief minister of the southern state of Tamil Nadu, is intended to renew efforts to decipher the script. The push, however, is not merely about historical scholarship. It is the latest front in a cultural war over India’s ancient past.

The country’s ascendant Hindu nationalists argue that the Aryan race, which brought the Vedic religion of Hinduism to India, represents the original Indian people. The claim is central to the concept of Hindutva, the ideology of Hindu supremacy promoted by the party of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Mr. Stalin’s party, and many others, hold a different view. They say that the Dravidians of southern India are the country’s indigenous people, and that the Aryans of northern India were invaders from Europe. (In reality, the distinction between Aryans and Dravidians is itself not clear-cut.)

Deciphering the script, the debate’s partisans believe, could help settle the question.

In Hindu nationalists’ conception of the past, the Indus script most likely has links to Sanskrit, a classical language of India and the one in which the Hindu scriptures were written.

In the minds of Mr. Stalin and others, the script most likely has Tamil roots. (Tamil, a Dravidian language, is another classical language of India.) That, in turn, would cement the Dravidian claim to being the original inhabitants of India.

It is not for a lack of trying that the script has remained undeciphered. Archaeologists, technology experts and linguists the world over have been endeavoring to unlock the script for years, Mr. Stalin said while announcing the $1 million prize.

Asko Parpola, a Finnish Indologist who has studied the Indus script since 1964, said that deciphering it could put the Indus Valley civilization in the realm of history rather than prehistory, giving new perspective to India’s cultural evolution.

But a politically motivated effort, he warned, could decide the results in advance and try to find evidence to justify them.

The Indus Valley civilization, also called the Harappan civilization, is seen by experts as on a par with the better-known ones of Egypt, Mesopotamia and China.

One of the earliest, it flourished on the banks of the Indus and Saraswati Rivers during the Bronze Age. It had planned townships, water management and drainage systems, huge fortified walls and exquisite pottery and terra cotta artistry.

Since the Archaeological Survey of India announced the first findings on the civilization in 1924, around 5,000 inscriptions have been excavated.

They are engraved in stone or metal, or stamped onto fired clay. The brevity of the inscriptions, along with the absence of a Rosetta Stone-like text showing its symbols in translation, are among the reasons the script has not been deciphered, scholars say.

Mr. Parpola postulates that the signs found on the clay tablets were pictures that should be read as complete words. They could also be read phonetically, for homophones, he argues.

He believes that his research offers proof of the script’s Dravidian roots. The fish signs found in many inscriptions, he theorizes, were pictograms that could also mean “star” — the Dravidian word for fish, “meen,” was a homophone for star.

Bahata Ansumali Mukhopadhyay, a researcher who has tried to decipher the script for 10 years, differs with Mr. Parpola on the fish hypothesis.

She argues that the fish signs were used to signify categories of shiny commodities like gemstones and polished copper and bronze items. Calling the Indus script a “mercantile script,” Ms. Mukhopadhyay said that examples in which fish signs were used consecutively represented the names of related commodities, and that the excavated clay tablets were tax stamps.

The script is meant to be read as symbols, not phonetically, Ms. Mukhopadhyay said. “To show ivory, for example, they simply used a tusk-like sign,” she said.

Mr. Parpola, who is working on the sixth volume of “Corpus of Indus Seals and Inscriptions,” a database of all available material culture on the Indus civilization, said he had received a lot of mail over the years from enthusiasts and researchers claiming to have cracked the script or found new inscriptions.

Aziz Kingrani, an academic in Pakistan, shared on social media one such bit of correspondence. Mr. Parpola congratulated Mr. Kingrani on a book he had written, but expressed regret that his findings had not substantially advanced the deciphering of the script.

“Please do keep on searching,” Mr. Parpola wrote.

Moo Deng doesn’t bounce like she did a couple months ago.

But she still resembles a ripe avocado overstuffed with pâté. She retains a moist sheen. She snuffles. She yawns. She naps. She very occasionally sniffs her mother’s hindquarters, then recoils in a springy huff.

Mostly, Moo Deng ignores the hundreds of thousands of pilgrims who have schlepped to an out-of-the-way zoo for one reason: her. She is, somewhat unaccountably, Thailand’s most famous creature in forever, human or pachyderm. Yet if she’s not in the pool, her eyes and nostrils peeking above the water, Moo Deng spends a lot of time snoozing in a secluded corner of her enclosure, sprawled like an abandoned sausage.

It is a lot for a 6-month-old pygmy hippopotamus, this life of intense celebrity. The visitors are mostly respectful, but there are exceptions, both foreign and Thai. There have been incidents of tossed bananas and of splashed water. The daily annoyances are the shrieks and gasps and the chorus of “Moo Deng, Moo Deng” at every flick of her tail, every wiggle of her bristly jowls. People have fainted in her presence, although Thailand’s sticky heat could have been a factor, too.

Last week, Hunter Hackett, a digital nomad from California, joined the Moo Deng receiving line with his wife, Anisi Baigude, a children’s book illustrator.

“I used to scoff at these trends, but now I want to be in on the next big thing,” Mr. Hackett said. “It reminds me of being young and innocent and being excited about, like, Pokémon.”

Moo Deng in Thai means bouncy pork, a kind of Super Ball meatball. (“Moo” means “pig” or “pork” in Thai.) Her siblings at the Khao Kheow Open Zoo in central Thailand include Moo Toon, or Braised Pork, and Moo Krob, or Crispy Pork. A song has been composed in her honor. It is called “Moodeng, Moodeng,” and boasts a chorus that goes: “Moo Deng, Moo Deng, Deng Deng Deng Deng Deng.”

Narongwit Chodchoy, the director of the Khao Kheow Open Zoo, has quickly monetized the park’s star occupant. He has arranged endorsement deals from an online marketplace and a telecom company. Wire sculptures of hippos decorate the zoo entrance. There is Moo Deng ice cream and Moo Deng moo deng at the canteen.

Mr. Narongwit said he knew why Moo Deng became a hit in Thailand. The country has been locked in political drama for a couple of decades. Barely a month after Moo Deng’s arrival on July 10, a Thai court ousted yet another prime minister.

“When Moo Deng was born, people in Thailand were sick of politics, sick of the news, sick of society,” Mr. Narongwit said. “She was a breath of fresh air.”

Expat Japanese executives living near the zoo sent home clips of Moo Deng being Moo Deng, which is to say being adorable. Pretty soon, Moo Deng was all over TikTok. “Saturday Night Live” featured her. In September, during the U.S. presidential campaign, she crushed former President Donald J. Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris in an online “Tonight Show” election poll. Google graced her with a doodle, befitting one of the most searched terms of 2024.

In the last three months of 2024, the Khao Kheow Open Zoo tripled its number of visitors to nearly 600,000 people. Like Paul the octopus, who predicted soccer match winners, Moo Deng was offered two fruit and vegetable platters emblazoned with the names of Mr. Trump and Ms. Harris. She picked Mr. Trump.

Mr. Narongwit said he personally preferred Mr. Trump because of the newly inaugurated president’s business acumen and determination. But he denied any fixing of the fruit baskets. And he is magnanimous about other recently born pygmy hippos, like Poppy in Virginia and Haggis in Scotland.

The one person unsurprised by Moo Deng’s rock star reception is her keeper, Atthapon Nundee. He was the one posting Moo Deng videos on his TikTok and Facebook accounts, as well as on the zoo’s social media accounts. He said he was intentional about building her online presence. Already, her older brother, Moo Toon, had shown glimpses of online acclaim, like in an image of him chomping on Mr. Atthapon’s leg. A winsome herd of capybaras under Mr. Atthapon’s care gained a following, too. And before that, the zookeeper debuted a two-toed sloth named Mr. Flash, whose slow-moving antics occupied Thais during the coronavirus pandemic.

“Mr. Flash didn’t do too much,” Mr. Atthapon acknowledged. “He is a sloth.”

By the time Jona and Tony produced Moo Deng, an 11-pound blob about the size of a one-liter bottle of Coke, Mr. Atthapon said he knew exactly what kind of hippo action the world craved. He now has two million followers on TikTok and 400,000 on Facebook.

As for himself, he does not watch videos to relax, Mr. Atthapon said.

“I’m too busy taking care of the animals,” he said.

Mr. Atthapon, known by the nickname Benz, as in Mercedes, did not grow up dreaming of becoming a zookeeper. He took care of small dogs — Pomeranians, Shih Tzus, the odd Chihuahua — when he was a boy, but he drove trucks for a living. Eight years ago, he applied for a job at the zoo because his mother was a caddy at a nearby golf course. Instead of driving food delivery trucks for the animals, Mr. Atthapon was told to tend five types of animals, including two varieties of hippos: pygmy and common.

“They’re a lot larger than Chihuahuas,” he said, even the pygmy variety, which can weigh around 500 lbs.

Last year, Mr. Atthapon was named one of Thailand’s most eligible bachelors by a local media group, but word has trickled out that he has a girlfriend.

The pygmy hippopotamus, or Choeropsis liberiensis, is endangered, with about 2,500 left in the wild in its native West Africa. Captive breeding populations are small. Poppy, the Virginian newborn, is Moo Deng’s cousin. Moo Deng’s half sister from her father’s side is also her mother’s granddaughter.

Last week, the Thai king’s sister presided over what was described as a wedding between Moo Manao, or Lime Pork, and Moo Toon, Moo Deng’s brother. Buddhist monks blessed the couple. They are expected to mate in mid-February, a ritual that tends to take place underwater. For a country that has long tied itself to the elephant — which adorned Thailand’s flag when it was known as Siam — there is a new pachyderm in town.

Animal rights groups have denounced some captive breeding programs as good for zoos, but not for the future of an endangered species. And the Khao Kheow Open Zoo, despite its sprawling grounds, features some dilapidated exhibits. The penguins look dispirited, the lemurs dejected. A flock of yellow-billed storks, native to Africa, stalks the grounds.

Most of the recent visitors do not linger with the other animals. Moo Deng is what lured them here, to a zoo more than two hours from Bangkok.

Dasha Scsherbina, a manicurist who was on a four-day Thai holiday from Chelyabinsk, Russia, admitted that she had never heard of Moo Deng before her Thai guide suggested they make a pilgrimage to the zoo. But, she said, she now understood the hype.

Below her, in a shaded corner, Moo Deng dozed. Not an ounce of fat rippled. Her zoomies were done for the day.

A Thai woman remarked to another that Moo Deng was about as active as a pile of buffalo poop. In the crowd, people spoke English, Russian, Mandarin, Vietnamese, Japanese and Thai, all united, for a few minutes, by the charms of a sleeping baby hippo.

Richard Grenell, President Trump’s envoy for special missions, said on social media that he was flying home from Venezuela with six American detainees on Friday, after meeting with the country’s president.

There were at least nine people with U.S. citizenship or residency detained in Venezuela, according to Venezuelan officials. The government had accused some of them of plotting to kill the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro.

“Just been informed that we are bringing six hostages home from Venezuela,” Mr. Trump said on social media. “Thank you to Ric Grenell and my entire staff. Great job!”

The United States has no diplomatic presence in Venezuela, and the U.S. government was not even sure where its citizens were being held, a State Department representative said this month.

Relatives of three detained U.S. citizens said they had gotten very little information from the American government and had not heard from their loved ones for months since they had disappeared.

David Estrella, 64, who worked in quality control for pharmaceutical companies in New Jersey, was among those released, according to his family.

“After such horrible moments that we and David have suffered unjustly, we look forward to welcoming him home and taking care of him until he fully recovers and leaves all this unfortunate incident behind him,” said Elvia Macias, Mr. Estrella’s former wife and close friend. He had entered Venezuela from Colombia to visit friends, Ms. Macias said.

Mr. Maduro, an autocrat whose country has seen an extraordinary exodus in recent years, has become increasingly isolated on the global stage, accused of having stolen the last presidential election in July. The United States has recognized the opposition candidate as the legitimate winner.

After the disputed elections, Mr. Maduro started rounding up foreign prisoners, a move that former. U.S. diplomats and analysts said they saw as seeking bargaining chips to use with other nations.

Mr. Trump’s foreign policy team includes many aides who support taking a hard line against Mr. Maduro, and policy experts said the Venezuelan leader most likely feared that Washington would take a tougher stance, including potentially imposing more economic sanctions.

Mr. Maduro, who has spent his entire tenure blaming Venezuela’s economic woes on U.S. imperialism, talked about starting a new era of engagement with the United States in televised remarks on Friday. He did not directly refer to the released Americans.

“We are starting a new beginning of historical relations where what needs to be done will be done and what needs to be rectified will be rectified,” he said. “We love and admire the people of the United States.”

Mr. Maduro also referred to his meeting with Mr. Grenell as “frank, direct, open and positive” and said: “We are not anti-American nor have we ever been anti-American. We are anti-imperialist, which is different.”

But Mauricio Claver-Carone, the U.S. special envoy for Latin America, said in a call with journalists on Friday morning that Mr. Grenell would not make any concessions in exchange for releasing American detainees.

“This is not a quid pro quo,” he said. “It’s not a negotiation in exchange for anything.” He urged the Maduro government to “heed” to Mr. Grenell’s demands “because ultimately there will be consequences otherwise.”

Julie Turkewitz contributed reporting from Santander, Colombia.