The team examined cylinder seals from a wide area of south-west Asia, including Mesopotamia, that dated to 4400 to 3400 BC. They found several symbols that corresponded to proto-cuneiform symbols.

Such cylinder seals were used for millennia throughout Mesopotamia, where they were rolled across clay tablets to print their motifs on them — often to verify a transaction or, later, a letter.

Researchers from the University of Bologna have unveiled how ancient cylinder seals played a key role in the development of writing in ancient Mesopotamia, marking a significant breakthrough in ...

Cylinder seals were also invented in Mesopotamia, and administrators used them to track mostly agricultural and textile trade starting in the mid-fourth millennium BCE.

The origins of writing in ancient Mesopotamia and beyond may rest on a group of cylindrical seals. A team of archeologists from the University of Bologna in Italy has identified a series of ...

Like the cylindrical seals, proto-cuneiform was used for accounting and bureaucratic purposes but many of the 800 identifiable proto-cuneiform pictographs aren’t yet decipherable. "The close ...

Long before proto-cuneiform arrived, though, Mesopotamian merchants had been branding the clay vessels that carried their goods down the Tigris and Euphrates rivers with seals describing their ...

Mesopotamian Masterpieces ... Other myths are represented on inch-high cylinder seals that deliver a visual impact way beyond their size.

The team examined cylinder seals from a wide area of south-west Asia, including Mesopotamia, that dated to 4400 to 3400 BC.

Some of the seals examined in the new study date to about 4400 B.C. — more than 1,000 years before the development of writing. "We focused on seal imagery that originated before the invention of ...

Researchers investigating how the first writing arose identified the motifs on preliterate "cylinder seals" used in the trade of agricultural products and textiles.