Giacobbe Giusti, Cylinder seal

Old Babylonian cylinder seal, c.1800 BCE, hematite. The robed king makes an animal offering to Shamash. This seal was probably made in a workshop at Sippar.^[1]

Giacobbe Giusti, Cylinder seal

Old Babylonian cylinder seal, c.1800 BCE, hematite. Linescan camera image of seal above (reversed to resemble an impression).

Giacobbe Giusti, Cylinder seal

Mesopotamian limestone cylinder seal and impression—worship of Shamash, (Louvre)

A cylinder seal is a small round cylinder, typically about one inch (2 to 3 cm) in length, engraved with written characters or figurative scenes or both, used in ancient times to roll an impression onto a two-dimensional surface, generally wet clay. Cylinder seals were invented around 3500 BC in the Near East, at the contemporary sites of Susa in south-western Iran and Uruk in southern Mesopotamia. They are linked to the invention of the latter’s cuneiform writing on clay tablets.^[2]^[3]^[4] They were used as an administrative tool, a form of signature, as well as jewelry and as magical amulets; later versions would employ notations with Mesopotamian cuneiform. In later periods, they were used to notarize or attest to multiple impressions of clay documents. Graves and other sites housing precious items such as gold, silver, beads, and gemstones often included one or two cylinder seals, as honorific grave goods.

The cylinder seals themselves are typically made from hardstones, and some are a form of engraved gem. They may instead use glass or ceramics, like Egyptian faience. Many varieties of material such as hematite, obsidian, steatite, amethyst, lapis lazuli and carnelian were used to make cylinder seals. As the alluvial country of Mesopotamia lacks good stone for carving, the large stones of early cylinders were imported probably from Iran.^[5] Most seals have a hole running through the centre of the body, and they are thought to have typically been worn on a necklace so that they were always available when needed.

Giacobbe Giusti, Cylinder seal

Size comparison of seals, with their impression strips
(modern/current impressions)

While most Mesopotamian cylinder seals form an image through the use of depressions in the cylinder surface (see lead photo above), some cylinder seals print images using raised areas on the cylinder (see San Andrés image, below, which is not related to Mesopotamian cylinder seals). The former are used primarily on wet clays; the latter, sometimes referred to as roller stamps, are used to print images on cloth and other similar two dimensional surfaces.

Cylinder seals are a form of impression seal, a category which includes the stamp seal and finger ring seal. They survive in fairly large numbers and are often important as art, especially in the Babylonian and earlier Assyrian periods. Impressions into a soft material can be taken without risk of damage to the seal, and they are often displayed in museums together with a modern impression on a small strip.

Uses

Cylinder seal impressions were made on a variety of surfaces:

amulets
bales of commodities
bricks
clay tablets
cloth
components of fabricated objects
doors
envelopes
storage jars

Theme-driven, memorial, and commemorative nature

Giacobbe Giusti, Cylinder seal

This cylinder seal from Cyprus shows two nude female figures. Each holds a flower, a symbol of fertility.^[6] The Walters Art Museum.

Giacobbe Giusti, Cylinder seal

This Neo-Assyriancylinder seal shows a ritual with winged protective deities. Walters Art Museum.

The images depicted on cylinder seals were mostly theme-driven, often sociological or religious. Instead of addressing the authority of the seal, a better study may be of the thematic nature of the seals, since they presented the ideas of the society in pictographic and text form. In a famous cylinder depicting Darius I of Persia: he is aiming his drawn bow at an upright enraged lion impaled by two arrows, while his chariot horse is trampling a deceased lion. The scene is framed between two slim palm trees, a block of cuneiform text, and above the scene, the Faravahar symbol of Ahura Mazda, the god representation of Zoroastrianism.

Enki as portrayed in various cylinder seals, British Museum

Cylinder seals

Assyria. Seals showing method of mounting; Brooklyn Museum Brooklyn Museum Archives, Goodyear Archival Collection

The reference below, Garbini, covers many of the following categories of cylinder seal. Dominique Collon’s book First Impressions, which is dedicated to the topic, has over 1000 illustrations.

A categorization of cylinder seals:

Akkadian cylinder seals.
- Akkadian seal, ca. 2300 BC, stone seal w/ modern impression. See National Geographic Ref. The glyptic (the Scenes) shows « God in barge« , people, and offerings.
Assyrian cylinder seals.
Cypriote Cylinder Seals.
Egyptian cylinder seals.
- Predynastic Egyptian Naqada era tombs and graves (imported).
- Egyptian Faience; see Pepi I ext link.
Hittite cylinder seals.
- Clay envelope usage, etc.; see Kultepe.
Kassite (the Kassites), cylinder seals.
Mittanian cylinder seals.
Old Babylonian cylinder seals.
Persian cylinder seals; see Darius I, Robinson ref.
Proto-Elamite cylinder seals.
Sumerian cylinder seals.
- Seals of the « Moon-God »; see Sin.
- see Ref. (Robinson), Seal of Ur-Nammu, 2112-2095 BC. Close-up picture of Seal, and adjacent ‘modern impression’, high resolution, 2X-3X natural size.
- « Shamash pictographic seals« ; see Mari, Syria.
Neo-Sumerian cylinder seals.
- see Ref (Garbini), « Seated God, and Worshippers », Cylinder seal, and a modern Impressin, p. 40, (British Museum, London).
Syrian cylinder seals.