The origins of writing in Mesopotamia lie in the images imprinted by ancient cylinder seals on clay tablets and other artifacts. A research group from the University of Bologna has identified a series of correlations between the designs engraved on these cylinders, dating back around six thousand years, and some of the signs in the proto-cuneiform script that emerged in the city of Uruk, located in what is now southern Iraq, around 3000 BCE.
The study—published in Antiquity—opens new perspectives on understanding the birth of writing and may help researchers not only to gain new insights into the meanings of the designs on cylinder seals but also to decipher many still-unknown signs in proto-cuneiform.
" The conceptual leap from pre-writing symbolism to writing is a significant development in human cognitive technologies," explains Silvia Ferrara, professor in the Department of Classical Philology and Italian Studies at the University of Bologna and lead researcher. "The invention of writing marks the transition between prehistory and history, and the findings of this study bridge this divide by illustrating how some late prehistoric images were incorporated into one of the earliest invented writing systems."
Among the first cities to emerge in Mesopotamia, Uruk was an immensely important centre throughout the fourth millennium BCE, exerting influence over a large region extending from southwestern Iran to southeastern Turkey.
In this region, cylinder seals were created. Typically made of stone and engraved with a series of designs, these cylinders were rolled onto clay tablets, leaving a stamped impression of the design.
Starting in the mid-fourth millennium BCE, cylinder seals were used as part of an accounting system to track the production, storage, and transport of various consumer goods, particularly agricultural and textile products.
It is in this context that proto-cuneiform appeared: an archaic form of writing made up of hundreds of pictographic signs, more than half of which remain undeciphered to this day. Like cylinder seals, proto-cuneiform was used for accounting, though its use is primarily documented in southern Iraq.
"The close relationship between ancient sealing and the invention of writing in southwest Asia has long been recognised, but the relationship between specific seal images and sign shapes has hardly been explored," says Ferrara. "This was our starting question: did seal imagery contribute significantly to the invention of signs in the first writing in the region?"
To find an answer, the researchers systematically compared the designs on the cylinders with proto-cuneiform signs, looking for correlations that might reveal direct relationships in both graphic form and meaning.
"We focused on seal imagery that originated before the invention of writing, while continuing to develop into the proto-literate period," add Kathryn Kelley and Mattia Cartolano, both researchers at the University of Bologna and co-authors of the study. "This approach allowed us to identify a series of designs related to the transport of textiles and pottery, which later evolved into corresponding proto-cuneiform signs."
This discovery reveals, for the first time, a direct link between the cylinder seal system and the invention of writing, offering new perspectives for studying the evolution of symbolic and writing systems.
"Our findings demonstrate that the designs engraved on cylinder seals are directly connected to the development of proto-cuneiform in southern Iraq," confirms Silvia Ferrara. "They also show how the meaning originally associated with these designs was integrated into a writing system."
The study was published in Antiquity under the title Seals and signs: tracing the origins of writing in ancient Southwest Asia. The authors are Kathryn Kelley, Mattia Cartolano, and Professor Silvia Ferrara from the Department of Classical Philology and Italian Studies at the University of Bologna.
