The Oldest Inscribed Works of Art
in the Columbia Collections

EDITH PORADA
 

T
 

y 1 r ^ H E relief of the nude bearded hero wrestling with a lion,
symmetrically duplicated, which has been reproduced on
page 29, is cut in the hard stone of a cylindrically shaped
seal no more than I'/i" high.'* The "cylinder seal," for that is
the technical term for this type of object, must be rolled over a
surface of soft clay or of some other material which retains in
rehef rhe impression of the engraved design and the inscription.

The intended use of clay for purposes of record and the pres¬
ence on the cylinder of a column of cuneiform or wedge-shaped
signs enables today's archaeologically informed reading public to
detennine the general region in which this seal was made: Meso¬
potamia, the land between and beyond the rivers Euphrates and
Tigris, today called Iraq.

Such cylinder seals were used to authenticate vast numbers of
miscellaneous records: from letters to litigations, from dockets to
deeds of purchase which were produced by business and bureauc¬
racy in ancient Mesopotamia. The simple device of securing
movable property by sealing all access to it was probably discov¬
ered as early as the fifth millennium B.C., if not earlier. The
cylindrically shaped seal stone, however, which was usually per¬
forated in order to be worn as a pendant on a bracelet or necklace,
was an innovation made by the inhabitants of Mesopotamia some¬
time in the latter half of the fourth millennium B.C. From that time
on such seals were worn in that country for almost three thousand

* The Akkad cylinder is of brownish black serpentine. Height 32.5 mm.
Diameter 20 mm (narrowing to 19 mm at the center).

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