“The Mesopotamian seal has a peculiar shape, a small cylinder engraved on the outside, and thus impressing its distinctive design when rolled over the clay of a tablet or the sealing of a package of merchandise. . . .

The seal engravings, many times more numerous than all the other works of art that have come down to us, disclose most fully the richness and vigour of this first great phase of Mesopotamian culture.”

—Henri Frankfort, The Art and Architecture of the Ancient Orient, fourth edition, 1970. The blank area of the cylinder seal pictured above was for further cuneiform inscription.