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Seals and Sealing in the Ancient World from Part I - The Ancient Near East and Cyprus
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 April 2018
The emergence of cylinder seals in southern Mesopotamia in the fourth millennium BCE was a new technology vital to temple accounting. During the proto-literate period the type of information carried by the seals and their impressions changed; as this happened the first numerical notations and inscribed “proto-writing” emerged. Assyriologists have examined the development of the numerical systems and “proto-writing,” while art historians and archaeologists examine the meaning and function of seal imagery. This chapter analyzes Uruk seal imagery in conjunction with numerical and “proto-writing” technologies to reveal the interconnectedness of seal and inscription as a larger accounting system. It is concluded that the introduction of numerical and ideographic signs occurred simultaneously with a change in the symbolic value of seal imagery, and that the meaning of seal imagery was linked to commodity recording and carried clues regarding social connotations.
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