A
cylinder seal is a cylinder engraved with a 'picture story', used in ancient times to roll an impression onto a two-dimensional surface, generally wet
clay. First appearing in the
Near East during the
Uruk period, later versions would employ notations with
Mesopotamian hieroglyphs. In later periods, they were used to
notarize or attest to multiple impressions of clay documents.
The seal itself was made from hard stone, glass, or ceramics such as Egyptian faience. Many varieties of material such as hematite, obsidian, steatite, amethyst and carnelian were used to make cylinder seals, but lapis lazuli was especially popular because of the beauty of the blue stone. Graves and other sites hoarding precious items such as gold, silver, beads, and gemstones often included one or two cylinder seals, as honorific grave goods.
While most Mesopotamian cylinder seals form an image through the use of depressions in the cylinder surface (see lead photo above), some cylinder seals print images using raised areas on the cylinder (see San Andrés image below). The former are used primarily on wet clays; the latter, sometimes referred to as roller stamps, are used to print images on cloth and other similar two dimensional surfaces.
Cylinder seals are a form of impression seal, a category which includes the stamp seal and finger ring seal.
