Stamp seals comprised a critical component of the administrative infrastructure of the Indus Civilization. Each stamp seal is the result of a unique sequence of actions that was shaped by a particular configuration of social relations. Reconstructing operational sequences, specific intervals of action utilized in seal production, can provide insight into shifting social boundaries among seal carvers in the Indus Civilization. In this chapter I present a preliminary report on a new approach that draws upon experimental replication and microtopographic analysis to infer the operational sequences used to produce particular seals. Toward this end, a team of volunteers engaged in an archaeological replication project that generated a sample of thirty experimental seals using tools and techniques derived from the archaeological record. Using microscopic techniques that facilitated the identification of the experimental seals’ operational sequences, I reconstructed the operational sequences employed by Indus carvers to create two stamp seals from the archaeological site of Chanhu-daro. I find significant differences in the seals’ operational sequences, supporting the conclusion that the tested artifacts were not carved by the same or closely related people. These results expand upon work that emphasizes the analysis of stylistic attributes. In the future I will draw on this approach to delineate the operational sequences used to produce a large sample of seals, enhancing our understanding of the role of seal carvers in the political economy of the Indus Civilization.

The so-called Talismanic class is a distinctive group of Minoan incised beads that were manufactured during the Neopalatial period on Crete. Although their form matches that of seal stones, there has been a certain reluctance to believe that they were actually used sphragistically. For most types of incised beads from the Near East and Aegean we have impressions on clay that confirm their use in stamping and securing. However, for the numerous Talismanic-class stones we have few impressions preserved. Their style is also strikingly abstract in appearance in a time and place where artistic styles tended toward naturalism. Therefore, it has been proposed that Talismanic stones were magical amulets or imitation seals. Beyond basic facts about their materials, typology, and techniques, very little has been proposed recently in terms of their socio-historical context. However, by tying together evidence from the manufacturing process, the contexts in which they were produced, and the uses of seals in the ancient world, we can compare what we know of Talismanic-class stones to the wider cultural context of the Mediterranean Bronze Age. As a result, we can start to see a clearer picture of how the Talismanic-class stones were used and by whom.

In 2005 at Giza in Egypt, teams working for Dr. Mark Lehner discovered an apparently undisturbed series of dump deposits containing about 1,200 clay sealings dating to the reign of Menkaure, builder of the last major pyramid at Giza. A core group of 424 of these sealings were impressed by just 12 seals distributed to the owners by the central government. By reconstructing the seals of these officials and examining their uses over the period covered by the sequence of dumping deposits, we can gain an important synchronic snapshot of the development of the Egyptian state.

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.

Facilitated by the volumes of the Corpus der minoischen und mykenischen Siegel (Berlin 1960–2009), scholars studying Minoan and Mycenaean seal stones and sealings of the Aegean Bronze Age (ca. 2300–1300 BCE) have worked in two major areas: chronology and function. Chronology is now well understood through a process of creating a stylistic typology for seals that can be fixed in time through seals from stratigraphic excavations. Understanding the function of seals relies on a detailed typology of sealings and their role in administration as witnessed by documents written in the three major Aegean scripts, Cretan Pictographic and Linear A and B.

Among the many aspects that scholars take into account when studying ancient cultures, administration systems take an important role, and have been considered crucial in the path toward state formation and social complexity. Numerous seals and seal impressions from ancient Egypt prove the existence of an early form of control over the distribution of goods, which were imported and exported by the state, and eventually transported over long distances. In Early Dynastic Egypt (ca. 3250–2700 BCE), however, sealing practices are probably more complex and diverse than has hitherto been acknowledged and the evolution of such systems has been too narrowly connected to the centralized administration. The possibility of private usage or of local and regional differences has received little attention. After comparison with models from the ancient Near East, we are now better equipped to interpret the rather varied nature of seals and seal impressions discovered in different parts of Egypt.

Seals as administrative tools have their origin in the sixth millennium BCE in the Syro-Mesopotamia heartland of the Tigris and Euphrates valley. Beginning as stamp seals, cylindrically shaped seals were invented at the same time as proto-cuneiform writing, in the middle of the fourth millennium BCE. While the site of their invention is still uncertain, the cylinder seal continued to be closely associated for the next 3,000 years with all of the cultures that adapted cuneiform to represent their spoken language. This introductory overview of seals and sealings in greater Mesopotamia will begin with a brief summary of the history of scholarship. It will present a summary of the iconographic, stylistic, and functional evolution of Mesopotamian glyptic through the middle of the second millennium BCE, placing emphasis on the changing roles of seals within the administrative system. It will end with several case studies of how seal iconography and style served as a medium through which long-distance cultural interaction was manifest across the larger ancient Near East extending from Egypt to the Indus and from the Persian Gulf to Central Asia. Hybrid styles and iconographies served to connect a vast and highly interconnected world, and they serve today to help us reconstruct that interaction.

Sealing technology first appears in Egypt around 3600 BCE during the Naqada II period of the Predynastic. Thereafter, the use of seals undergoes a lengthy evolution, responding to the shifting structure of the country’s political system, as well as changes in cultural, religious, and artistic traditions that spanned some three millennia. This chapter will provide a comprehensive, typological overview of the evolution in seal forms (including cylinders, stamps, scarabs, and other specialized seal forms) and iconography, and discuss continuities and discontinuities that characterize Egyptian sealing traditions. Here we will examine the evolving modes of seal usage, both as administrative tools and as artifacts that expressed a wider suite of religious and cultural aspects of Egyptian society. Particularly valuable in the Egyptian record is the rich textual source material which illuminates the ways seals and sealing systems related to functioning administrative systems. The following discussion will enmesh the physical evidence within a selection of relevant ancient documentary sources. This review of sealing traditions in Egypt will include a case study. In the context of the present discussion the Abydos case study will be used to illustrate methodologies and issues in the recovery, analysis, and interpretation of seals and sealings in the Egyptian archaeological record.

The primary function of scarabs during all periods of their use in Egypt was amuletic, yet at times scarabs were also used as the most prevalent type of seal for the central administration. This is especially true for the late Middle Kingdom (ca. 1850–1700 BCE), the period that saw the beginning of mass production of scarabs. Thousands of seal impressions made by scarabs were found in administrative units of this period, reflecting the large-scale use of scarabs as seals for the central administration. This chapter will present the evidence for the widespread use of scarabs in the Middle Kingdom administration, with a focus on the late Middle Kingdom. It will discuss the most common designs found on seal impression, as well as the current views concerning the use of royal-name, private-name, and design scarabs for this purpose.

Minoan glyptic imagery has been described as problematically ambiguous and has produced conflicting interpretations in scholarship. This chapter demonstrates how categorical classification of glyptic imagery reflects Western taxonomic structures, clustering image identification around central concepts, which both produces and marginalizes “ambiguous” imagery. This way of organizing knowledge conflicts with the fluidity of glyptic images. When organized as networks – rather than categories – of imagery, the “ambiguity” of Minoan glyptic is repositioned as multivalency, where multiple images can be elicited through a single, condensed form that draws on a network of comparanda. This condensed expression is both produced and supported by the physical properties of the glyptic medium, for example, Minoan lentoid and amygdaloid stamp seals can have ambiguous orientation, a quality that can be used to produce multiple images in different orientations. This is supported by the abbreviated forms used in glyptic imagery, which, owing to the lack of specificity through the omission of fine detail, can be readily fused into multivalent images. To situate this discussion within a wider context, this chapter briefly surveys other instances in which multivalent and ambiguous images have been created for a specific purpose, highlighting the possibility that Neopalatial Minoan seal engravers deliberately produced multivalent imagery in glyptic.

This chapter introduces Indus seals, and provides a chronological overview of seals in the various phases of Indus civilization. It then addresses various aspects of Indus seals, including inscriptions, the photographic Corpus of Indus Seals and Inscriptions, seals as badges of authority and amulets, seals as administrative tools, and seal manufacture. As such, the chapter provides a brief but thorough introduction to the more detailed studies that comprise the rest of this section.

This chapter compares the iconography of a two-sided Middle Minoan seal recently discovered in a tholos tomb and a two-sided seal kept at a museum’s collection and probably dated to the Archaic period. The images engraved on one side of each of the pieces are so similar that they suggest that the engraver of the Archaic (?) seal was copying a Minoan seal with iconography similar to that of the Middle Minoan piece. Further features, such as the shape of the Archaic (?) seal as well as the iconography on its other side, also point to the influence of Minoan prototypes.

The seals and sealing of the Dilmun Culture represent one of the most understudied glyptic traditions of the old world. Based on the extant data from the Early Dilmun period (ca. 2250–1650 BCE) the present contribution provides an introduction to the all-pervasive “Gulf” and “Dilmun Type” stamp seals and evaluates the range of their chronological and geographical distribution. Above all, Bronze Age Dilmun is seen as a key context for understanding the sealing traditions of the Old World because it represents a melting pot in which hybrid forms of glyptic art developed under the influence of her major trade partners in the Indus Valley, Babylonia, and beyond. In the present study, rectangular Dilmun seals and cylinder seals carved in the Dilmun style are investigated as cardinal examples in Dilmun art of such creative translations. The study additionally introduces evidence that applies to the symbolic and practical function of the seals as bureaucratic devices in an ideological and administrative system. The latter includes impression on sealings and cuneiform tablets but also addresses a small group of so-called tokens stamped with Dilmun-related seals, and sealing symbolism expressed on pottery vessels.

Aegean scholars have recently completed fifty years of glyptic codification with the Corpus der minoischen und mykenischen Siegel (CMS), which means that virtually all Aegean seals and sealings are now recorded and classified. Originally, the study of Aegean glyptic focused almost exclusively on seals as art-historical documents, while the Corpus now encourages both systematic studies of glyptic chronology and a more refined analysis of technical developments. Another area of research especially pertinent to the pre- and proto-literate Aegean is the function of seals as “badges” for specific socio-economic groups. There is furthermore a pronounced shift to the study of the use of seals and the role of sealings in palatial economic and administrative systems. The research pendulum is swinging once again with a new emphasis on the amuletic and magical properties of seals, gender-specific seal iconography, and the activities of particular glyptic groups.

Recarving is a common feature of many Bronze and Iron Age Near Eastern and eastern Mediterranean cylinder-seal designs. Stamp seals were rarely recarved. Abrasion and recutting resulted in changes that pose core questions about the nature of seal authenticity and authority. Recarving altered the authoritative relationship between the image on a seal and its impression in clay or wax, yet it also lent cylinder seals a greater weight of authenticity. This study considers vocabularies, texts documenting seal redesign, and examples of seal recarving from the third to the first millennia BCE from Iran to the Aegean. It illustrates several examples from the island of Cyprus that inspired this broader inquiry. The authority invested in cylinder seals could draw on generations of power and seal designs from far distant places. The limits of that authority varied geographically and chronologically as well as by economic, social, and political context. Recarved inscriptions were most typical of cylinder seals in contexts of centralized bureaucracy and royal power in the Near East. By contrast, cylinder seals with recarved figural designs were more characteristic of people involved in long-distance exchange. Detailed contextualized studies of recarving expand our knowledge of how seals were used to express the maintenance, transfer, and transformation of power within and among cultures with varying degrees of bureaucratic complexity.

The iconography of the Harappan world, particularly as seen in the seals, sealings, and molded tablets found at sites in the Indus Valley and beyond, includes a number of mythological characters and narrative scenes that have to date defied interpretation. Past attempts to deal with this material have tried to relate the imagery to contemporary Western Asian iconography or to later Hindu mythology, but with limited success. This chapter attempts to deal with the mythological and narrative iconography of the Harappan world on its own terms, not necessarily with the aim of interpreting it, but rather to understand the role that visual imagery may have played in embodying and propagating the belief systems of the Harappan world. By combining standard art-historical approaches with current theories of narratology, as well as with models provided by recent scholarship on fantastic and mythological creatures in antiquity, this chapter first defines the cast of characters found in Harappan iconography and then proceeds to examine the scenes in which they interact with each other or with the inhabitants of the “known” world. While many of these scenes have little meaning on their own, taken together they may provide hints to the narratives that underlay the mythology of the Harappan world, and how they were used within the Harappan system.