NDA (II) 2016 General Ability Test · Question 149 of 150

Correct — D, Mesopotamian. The cylinder seal was invented in the Near East around 3500 BC, at Uruk in southern Mesopotamia and slightly later at Susa, and it remained the characteristic sealing device of Mesopotamian civilisation for some three thousand years. It is a small cylinder of hard stone with a design cut into its curved surface and a hole bored lengthwise so it could be worn on a cord. Rolled across wet clay, it left a continuous band of images — a design that suits a writing culture using clay tablets and clay jar-stoppers, which is exactly what Mesopotamia had. Sumerian, Akkadian, Old Babylonian, Assyrian, Kassite, Mittanian and Persian workshops all produced them, in hematite, obsidian, steatite, amethyst, lapis lazuli and carnelian.

• (a)Harappan — The intended trap, and the one worth learning from. The Indus civilisation also produced enormous numbers of seals, but they are flat, square STAMP seals, usually of steatite, bearing an animal — most often the so-called unicorn — above a line of undeciphered script, and they were pressed rather than rolled. Shape is the cleanest discriminator between the two civilisations' seals.
• (b)Egyptian — Egypt did use cylinder seals for a period in the Early Dynastic age, borrowed along with other ideas from Mesopotamia, and Egyptian faience examples survive. But they never became the Egyptian norm — Egypt moved to the stamp seal and above all to the scarab, and it wrote on papyrus rather than clay, so the rolling technique had far less use there.
• (c)Roman — Far too late and quite differently equipped. Rome sealed documents with engraved gemstones set in signet rings pressed into wax, a stamp technology, and by then the cylinder seal had been out of use in the Near East for centuries.

A seal is a device for marking ownership, authority or authenticity. Its form follows the material it is used on. Where records were kept on wet clay, as in Mesopotamia, a cylinder that could be rolled across a tablet or a jar-stopper produced a long, unbroken and hard-to-forge impression, and could be re-rolled to cover any length of surface. Where seals were pressed onto a small tag or a lump of clay closing a bale of goods, as in the Indus cities, a flat stamp was enough. The Mesopotamian cylinder seal therefore evolved alongside cuneiform writing, and the two technologies share the same medium.

Both civilisations are being compared in the same question because they were in contact. Mesopotamian records name a distant trading land called Meluha, which scholars identify with the Harappan region, and Indus-style seals and carnelian beads have turned up at Mesopotamian sites. That contact is precisely why an examiner can put Harappan and Mesopotamian side by side and expect candidates to separate them on a detail. Do it on shape: cylinder and rolled means Mesopotamia, square stamp with an animal and a short script line means Harappa.

• Cylinder seals were invented around 3500 BC at Uruk in southern Mesopotamia, and slightly later at Susa in south-western Iran.
• They were cut from hardstones — hematite, obsidian, steatite, amethyst, lapis lazuli, carnelian — and were rolled across wet clay to leave a continuous impression.
• Harappan seals are flat square stamp seals, usually of steatite, carrying an animal motif and a line of undeciphered script.
• Cylinder seals were used by Sumerian, Akkadian, Old Babylonian, Assyrian, Kassite, Mittanian, Proto-Elamite and Persian cultures, and for a time in Egypt.
• Mesopotamian texts call a distant trading partner Meluha, generally identified with the Harappan region.

• Marking Harappan because Indus seals are the ones taught most in Indian classrooms; the Indus seals are square stamps, not cylinders.
• Ruling Egypt out too absolutely — it did use cylinder seals briefly, but the form is Mesopotamian in origin and in habit.
• Confusing the Roman signet ring pressed into wax with the rolled clay impression of a cylinder seal.

Ancient world history reaches NDA as short recognition items about a single artefact, script or site, and cross-civilisation comparisons like this one are the standard way of raising the difficulty.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Harappan seals are best described as

  • (a)cylindrical seals of hardstone rolled on clay
  • (b)flat square stamp seals, usually of steatite
  • (c)engraved gemstones set in finger rings
  • (d)clay tablets baked with an official mark

  Answer(b) flat square stamp seals, usually of steatite — typically bearing an animal motif above a line of undeciphered script.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The cylinder seal developed in Mesopotamia mainly because records and containers there were sealed with

  • (a)papyrus sheets
  • (b)wet clay
  • (c)wax
  • (d)birch bark

  Answer(b) wet clay — a cylinder rolled across clay leaves a long, continuous and hard-to-forge impression, which a stamp cannot.