The accounting systems that developed in Southeast Asia during the fourth millennium BC laid the foundation for the birth of writing in Mesopotamia. Transactions were physically documented using tokens, labels and bullae (clay balls), numerical tablets and cylinder seals that printed images on clay tablets. These seals were rich in iconography, but little research had until now focused on the possible influence of these motifs on the writing that emerged in the city of Urukin present-day southern Iraq, around the year 3000 BC.
A research group from the University of Bologna has undertaken this undertaking and has identified a series of correlations between the designs engraved on these cylinderswhich date back about six thousand years, and some of the signs of that protocuneiform writing.
The study, published in Antiquity, opens new perspectives to understand the birth of writing and can help researchers not only gain new insights into the meanings of cylinder seal designs, but also decipher many still unknown signs in protocuneiformaccording to the University of Bologna.
“The conceptual leap from pre-writing symbolism to writing is a significant advance in human cognitive technologies,” explains Silvia Ferrara, principal investigator of the study. According to this professor from the Department of Classical Philology and Italian Studies at the University of Bologna, “the invention of writing marks the transition between prehistory and history, and the findings of this study bridge this gap by illustrating how some late prehistoric images were incorporated into one of the first writing systems invented».
Photograph of a protocuneiform tablet that shows the signs analyzed in the research
Urukone of the first cities to emerge in Mesopotamia, was a very important center during the fourth millennium BC. C. and exerted great influence over a wide region that extended from southwest Iran to southeast Turkey. There, cylindrical seals were created, usually made of stone, engraved with a series of designs. These cylinders were stretched on clay tablets, leaving their printed designs.
From the middle of the fourth millennium BC. C., cylinder seals began to be used as part of a system to account for the production, storage and transportation of consumer goods, particularly agricultural products and textiles.
In this context, the Italian university explains, protocuneiform writing was borna form of archaic writing composed of hundreds of pictographic signs, more than half of which remain undeciphered. Like cylinder seals, protocuneiform writing was used for accounting, although its use is documented primarily in southern Iraq.
“The close relationship between ancient seals and the invention of writing in Southwest Asia has long been recognized, but the relationship between specific seal images and sign forms has barely been explored,” says Ferrara. “This was our initial question: did the imagery of the seals contribute significantly to the invention of signs in the first writing in the region?”
To find an answer, researchers systematically compared cylinder designs with protocuneiform signs, looking for correlations that could reveal direct relationships in both graphic form and meaning. «We focus on the images of seals that originated before the invention of writing, but continued to develop in the protoliterary period,” explain Kathryn Kelley and Mattia Cartolano, researchers at the University of Bologna and co-authors of the study.
This approach allowed them identify a series of designs related to the transport of textiles and ceramics, “which later evolved into the corresponding protocuneiform signs,” they add.
This discovery reveals, for the first time, a direct link between the cylinder seal system and the invention of writing offering new perspectives to study the evolution of symbolic and writing systems.
“Our findings show that The drawings engraved on cylinder seals are directly related to the development of writing protocuneiform in southern Iraq,” says Silvia Ferrara. “They also show how the meaning originally associated with these drawings was integrated into a writing system».
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