Fake Cuneiform Seals and the Power of Unreadable Writing. Across the ancient southern Levant, some cylinder seals carried inscriptions that
The study shows that writing in the ancient southern Levant was not only a matter of literacy. It was also a matter of appearance, memory, status, and political connection. Some seals carried readable names and divine invocations. Others carried signs that resembled writing without transmitting stable language. Both belonged to the same wider symbolic world. For scribes, cuneiform could record identity and devotion. For many others, its visual form alone could speak of authority. The so-called fake cuneiform on these seals was not fake in the modern sense of forgery. It was an ancient way of using the image of writing. Across roughly 1,500 years, from Middle Bronze Age prestige objects to Neo-Assyrian imperial seals, the southern Levant turned cuneiform into more than a script. It became a sign of belonging to worlds of power.
