of seal was invented before the first signs of writing because they are impressed on
hollow clay balls often containing tokens that are recognized as document forerunners
of numerical and proto-cuneiform tablets.
During the next century or more, cylinder seals were a central component of the
administrative toolkit that included hollow clay balls and tokens, tablets impressed
with numbers, and finally tablets impressed with numbers and one or two pictographic
signs. These administrative documents along with the clay closing devices were used to
monitor the production of commodities and the distribution of rations, the control
of herds, and other economically vital activities. It is during this period of the very first
cylinder seals that we see the most expansive iconography ever employed in glyptic art
(Amiet 1980 a; Boehmer 1999 ). One reason for this explosion of visual imagery must
certainly be that at this early period, with writing in its infancy, images played a central
role in storing and transmitting the literal messages vital to the functioning of the
sector of the economy run by the state. Several scholars have offered interpretations
about the meaning of the imagery carried on the Uruk period seals. The most con-
vincing (Brandes 1979 ; Dittmann 1986 ) propose that the imagery should be understood
not as “signatures” of responsible individuals, but rather as pictorial messages trans-
mitting information about economic units, or the identity of the receiving or sending
institutions, or the particular event that was associated with the administrative trans-
action (Figure 16. 8 ).
During the Uruk period, there is a remarkable consistency in style, imagery and
patterns of use of cylinder seals throughout the vast geographic expanse of the Late
Uruk culture. Glyptic evidence from the sites on the middle and upper Euphrates
(Arslantepe, Habuba Kibira, Jebel Aruda, Sheik Hassan, Hacinebi), the Jezira (Tell
Brak, Hamoukar), the central Zagros (Godin Tepe) and Susiana (Susa and Chogah
Mish) all share the same stylistic characteristics with seal impressions from Uruk itself.
Each corpus, however, has a distinct distribution of themes which suggests that
different economic concerns and sectors dominated at individual sites (Pittman in
press). Almost every site with Uruk-style glyptic has produced at least one image of
–– Seals and sealings in the Sumerian world ––Figure 16.7Drawing of a modern impression of a cylinder seal from
Telloh carved in the baggy style (after Amiet 1980 a: 297 )