Cylinder Seal
Cylinder Seals were impression stamps used by the people of ancient Mesopotamia. Known as kishib in Sumerian and kunukku in Akkadian, the seals were used by everyone, from royals to slaves, as a means of authenticating identity in correspondence. In time, they came to be recognized as one's personal identification.
They originated in the Late Neolithic Period c. 7600-6000 BCE in the region known today as Syria (though, according to other claims, they originated later in Sumeria, modern Iraq) and were made from semiprecious stone (marble, obsidian, amethyst, lapis lazuli, to name only some) or metal (gold or silver). These seals were worn by their owners on strings of leather or other material around the neck or wrist or pinned to a garment.
The purpose of seals was to serve as a personal signature on a document or package to guarantee authenticity or legitimize a business deal; in the same way one signs a letter or form today or writes one's return address on an envelope or package to be mailed. The seal was rolled onto the moist clay of the document as an offical, binding, signature. Cylinder seals were also used in Egypt and developed completely independently in Mesoamerica as evidenced by archaeological finds of Olmec cylinder seals dating to c. 650 BCE. The Mesopotamian cylinder seal is the best known, however, and was the most widely used.
Cylinder Seals & Stamp Seals
Contemporaneous with cylinder seals were stamp seals which were smaller and less ornate in design. The typical cylinder seal was between 3-4 inches (7-10 cm) long while stamp seals were less than an inch (2 cm) in total and more closely resembled the later signet ring. It would make sense that the stamp seals preceded the cylinder seals as the former are more rudimentary but evidence suggests the seals were in use at the same time with one type favored more than the other in different regions. Scholar Clemens Reichel (whose essay is included in Englehardt's work, Agency in Ancient Writing) suggests the reason for this was simply a matter of necessity.
Those areas which favored the stamp seal (the regions of modern-day Syria and Turkey) had no need for the elaborate design imprint of the cylinder seal while the regions to the south, which had a more highly developed bureaucracy, required more detailed information in a seal.
The city of Uruk, for example, had a highly complex bureaucracy of different agencies which required detailed information on who was signing what document and, further, which office it originated from. The simpler and smaller stamp seals could not provide the space on which to carve such information while the longer cylinder seals fit the need perfectly.
The longer cylinder seals would have provided the name of the agency and name and title of the individual within that agency who was signing the document. In order to accurately represent and identify the owner of such a seal, a skilled artist was required who carved the story of the individual on the stone cylinder in exacting detail.
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