A cylinder seal is a small, round cylinder invented around 3500 BCE in the Near East. It was particularly important in southern Mesopotamia. Cylinder seals were usually engraved with written characters or figures, and were used for administrative purposes.
There were two ways in which the Mesopotamians used cylinder seals:
- Most Mesopotamian sylinder seals formed an image through the use of depressions in the cylinder surface. This type of seal is linked to the development of clay tablets, and produces an effect similar to that of sunken reliefs in Ancient Egypt.
- The second was as for the seal to print images using raised areas on the cylinder. These were often used to print images on cloth and other two-dimensional surfaces.
