the paramount ruler of the Late Uruk period, the so-called “priest-king” who in every
instance wears a distinctive rounded headband to secure a pageboy hair style (Figure
16. 9 ). He usually wears a long skirt, sometimes of hatched netting. He is shown in what
became the paradigmatic roles of the ruler – as the main actor in relation to the temple
or the gods, as a warrior, and as a hunter. An unresolved question is whether this figure
represents an institution or is a generic image of the local ruler. If the former is true,
then we must look to one site (by default Uruk) that projected the structure of cen-
tralized control across the cultural space. If the latter is correct, then we can understand
that the local organization of power across the wide zone was uniform, and that there
was little interregional competition that would have required the visual differentiation
of power. The image of the ruler reminds us that together with the invention of the
cylinder seal and writing, we are also at a moment when the elaborated imagery
necessary for a complex urban society was also invented for the first time. Beneath the
seemingly clear and easy to read images of the Late Uruk seals lay the proof that images
would from now on play an expanded role in the efforts made by power brokers to
effectively project their demands and expectations onto the various tiers of actors in the
new social and economic order of increasing inequality. Images had acquired new
functions that were vital to the smooth operation of a complex economy organized to
reinforce the power and privilege of the ruling elite. We will see that in the following
centuries, the imagery engraved on seals continues to project the authority and the
legitimacy of those holding the economic and legal power. However, with the increas-
ingly articulate and broad use of writing, the messages carried by the images became
increasingly symbolic.
The Late Uruk administrative system underwent rapid change. At the beginning,
just before the invention of writing, cylinder seals were the sole carrier of information
in the new administrative system. When the hollow clay balls were replaced by numeri-
cal tablets and ovoid tags, cylinders continued to be impressed on all documents. They
complemented the numerical information embedded in the document. This linkage
of glyptic image and message carried on the tablet changed radically when proto-
writing first appeared in the latest phase of the Late Uruk period, in level IV of the
Eanna precinct at Uruk (Boehmer 1999 ). While clay sealings securing mobile con-
tainers and immobile storage rooms continued to be impressed with cylinder seals,
–– Holly Pittman ––Figure 16.8Drawing of an ancient impression of a cylinder seal from Susa showing
a scene of administration (after Amiet 1972 : 646 )