Mesopotamian seals and the birth of writing

New article in Antiquity (05 November 2024):  "Seals and signs: tracing the origins of writing in ancient South-west Asia", by Kathryn Kelley, Mattia Cartolano, and Silvia Ferrara

Abstract

Administrative innovations in South-west Asia during the fourth millennium BC, including the cylinder seals that were rolled on the earliest clay tablets, laid the foundations for proto-cuneiform script, one of the first writing systems. Seals were rich in iconography, but little research has focused on the potential influence of specific motifs on the development of the sign-based proto-cuneiform script. Here, the authors identify symbolic precursors to fundamental proto-cuneiform signs among late pre-literate seal motifs that describe the transportation of vessels and textiles, highlighting the synergy of early systems of clay-based communication.

Introduction

The origins of writing in South-west Asia are often sought in the accounting systems that developed over the course of the fourth millennium BC, which physically documented transactions using tokens, tags and bullae (clay balls), numerical tablets and seals (Nissen et al. Reference Nissen, Damerow and Englund1993). Proto-cuneiform, first attested on clay tablets at the city of Uruk in southern Iraq c. 3350–3000 BC (Table 1, Uruk IV and III script phases), is a complex accounting system with hundreds of iconographic signs, many of which still defy interpretation. Elaboration of tokens, long used throughout South-west Asia, may have both stimulated the development of proto-cuneiform and served as models for several signs (Schmandt-Besserat Reference Schmandt-Besserat1992: 140–49) but token-to-sign comparisons, numerical notations aside, are rarely demonstrable (Englund Reference Englund1993; Zimansky Reference Zimansky1993) and the origin of sign forms is likely to be diverse, emerging from the multimedia environment of visual expression (Michalowski Reference Michalowski1990: 59).

Specific symbolic precursors to signs, apart from tokens, have not been the subject of concerted research, despite the potential importance that their identification could have for our understanding of the evolution of symbol systems and writing. Visual parallels to sign forms have been sought in the Uruk Vase of the Uruk IV period (see Table 1; Cooper Reference Cooper and Taylor2008; Hockmann Reference Hockmann2009; Selz Reference Selz and Wengrow2022) and broadly contemporaneous cylinder seal images. While Uruk-period seal imagery might be seen as a semiotic “forerunner to script” (Pittman Reference Pittman and Zsolnay2023: 238), with clear parallels between some seal and sign forms, relationships remain difficult to define (Pittman Reference Pittman and Ferioli1994: 190–91) and it is possible that the ‘pictography’ observed in seals is unrelated to the development of writing (Glassner Reference Glassner2003: 166–77).

In this article, we present a more nuanced perspective on the origins of the script through the exploration of promising correlations between proto-cuneiform signs and earlier, pre-literate seal motifs from sites associated with the Uruk phenomenon of the late fourth millennium BC. Our analysis offers evidence for the contribution of seals and sealing practices to the incipient use and form of proto-cuneiform signs. The motifs we discuss showcase the common interest of seal-bearing administrators and scribes in documenting the movement of textiles and vessels within or between cities.

Here follow these sections:

Information technologies and the Uruk phenomenon

Inter-related systems of symbols

Comparing seals and signs

Late pre-literate seal motifs and proto-cuneiform correlates

Symbol-sharing in the proto-literate period

Seals and writing in (inter-)regional context

After which comes:

Conclusion: seals and the invention of writing

The paper is well illustrated with drawings, photographs, and maps.  Readers who are interested in pursuing this topic further are strongly encouraged to peruse the original paper here.  Those who prefer a simpler journalistic account with a single photograph may turn to this article by Margherita Bassi in Gizmodo (November 7, 2024), "5,500-Year-Old Seals Offer New Clues About the Birth of Writing:  Italian researchers suggest that symbols from the oldest writing system in the world may have come directly from cylinder seal motifs", from which I take the following extracts:

For centuries, scholars have puzzled over the origins of the world’s first writing system. Now, a study by Italian researchers reveals that some of these earliest proto-cuneiform signs may have evolved directly from motifs on prehistoric cylinder seals.

The research, published in Antiquity, identified individual symbols carved into ancient Mesopotamian seals—used for tracking goods and conducting trade—that seem to have directly transformed into proto-cuneiform signs, a script that emerged in Mesopotamia over five thousand years ago. These connections not only shed light on the first invention of writing, but could also help decipher additional proto-cuneiform symbols, more than half of which are still a mystery to scholars.

Experts widely agree that cuneiform, invented by the Sumerians in what is now modern-day southern Iraq during the fourth millennium BCE, is the oldest writing system in the world—and as far as we know, the universe. All the major Mesopotamian civilizations, including the Akkadians, Babylonians, Assyrians, and Hittites, used it until at least 100 BCE. Cuneiform evolved from proto-cuneiform, a precursor script composed of simple symbolic pictographs that gradually incorporated syllabic elements. The earliest evidence of proto-cuneiform appears in the highly influential ancient Sumerian city of Uruk and dates to between 3350 and 3000 BCE.

…

“The conceptual leap from pre-writing symbolism to writing is a significant development in human cognitive technologies,” Ferrara concludes in the statement. “The invention of writing marks the transition between prehistory and history, and the findings of this study bridge this divide by illustrating how some late prehistoric images were incorporated into one of the earliest invented writing systems.”

Ultimately, this revelation sheds light on the potential origin of the first written script—arguably one of the greatest achievements of ancient civilizations—which allowed for other crucial advancements, such as long-distance communication, record-keeping, and literature.

Bassi does not mention Egypt at all, and the three Antiquity authors mention it only glancingly with regard to the motif of a fringed cloth on a cylinder seal from the Naqada IId period (c. 3450–3325) at Saqqara in Egypt, which is near to the ancient royal Egyptian necropolises.  It is clear that the authors of this study on the origins of cuneiform, and hence to them the earliest writing, do not wish to become enmired in the thorny matter of the priority of writing in Egypt vs. Mesopotamia, not to mention other conceivable contenders.  They simply take it for granted that cuneiform, hence writing, arose in Mesopotamia, which is indeed the current consensus, though there are still some partisans for the priority of hieroglyphs, hence (to them) writing.  Be that as it may, we must account for how that proto-cuneiform cylinder seal motif was found smack dab in the center of the Egyptian royal burial complex.

Another problem that must be addressed is the adjudication of Denise Schmandt-Besserat's thesis on the importance of shaped clay tokens (sealed inside of clay bullae) for accounting purposes (ca. 8000-3000 BC; note that this period coincides with the rise of agriculture during the Neolithic).  The Antiquity authors agree that accounting was an important ingredient in the evolution of cuneiform, but do not recognize Schmandt-Besserat's tokens as being a significant predecessor stage for the images and signs on proto-cuneiform seals.

Key Wikipedia quotation on Schmandt-Besserat's current research:

Schmandt-Besserat's present interest is the cognitive aspects of the token system that functioned as an extension of the human brain to collect, manipulate, store and retrieve data. She studies how processing an increasing volume of data over thousands of years brought people to think in greater abstraction.

 

Selected readings

• "The Alphabet and the Zodiac" (12/6/22)
• "The Origin(s) of Writing" (3/19/22) — with useful bibliography
• "The invention, development, and decipherment of writing" (12/30/22) — also with helpful bibliography
• "'The world's oldest in-use writing system'?" (5/12/12)
• "Script origin and typology, part 1" (7/1/24)
• "Script origin and typology, part 2" (7/5/24)
• "Wheat and word: astronomy and the origins of the alphabet" (3/15/24) — with a list of previous Sino-Platonic Papers by Brian Pellar (also 354 by J. Marshall Unger, 352 by various authors, 320 by Sara de Rose, 319 and 305 by ZHANG He, and 302 by Bin Yang — only relevant papers after #300) and a bibliography of relevant Language Log posts
• "Winged lions through time and space" (5/4/24) — Akkadian
• "Toward the decipherment of Harappan" (2/14/22) — Indus Valley seals

[Thanks to Hiroshi Kumamoto]