INTRODUCTION: ORIGIN, USE, AND MATERIALS. 3 
not know the evidence for it. These cone seals were developed later into the Sas- 
sanian seals, hemispherical (fig. 11), or flattened (fig. 12) more and more until 
they became a complete finger-ring (figs. 13, 14). Comparatively few tablets, and 
those of the Persian period or later, are found sealed with cone seals (fig. 15), 
which suggests that by this time parchment was in common use, as it was in Greece; 
and for parchment the flat seal was necessary, and indeed it is in common use in 
the East for impressions on paper at the present day. 
Among the infrequent forms may be mentioned those, mainly of the Hittite 
period, in which one end of the cylinder was prolonged into a handle, through 
which a hole was pierced transversely, instead of the usual longitudinal hole. Such 
cylinders are shown in figs. 16, 16a. Also in the earlier times of Gudea we find 
cylinders with the upper and lower ends thickened with a ridge (fig. 17), as if to 
make a setting for the design, or perhaps to substitute the plate of copper used to 
fasten the handle. ‘These ridges show in the impressions on tablets. 
i 
GAu 







Dr. Hilprecht (“The Babylonian Expedition,” vol. 1, part 11, p. 36) offers a 
new suggestion as to the origin of the seal cylinder. He shows that the earliest 
form of the character mu, meaning name, is an arrow, and he conjectures that the 
idea of name came from the owner’s mark on the shaft of his arrow. Then he adds: 
It becomes now very evident that the Babylonian seal cylinder, with its peculiar shape and use, 
was developed out of this hollow shaft of an arrow, marked with symbols and figures, and is but a com- 
bination and elaboration in a more artistic form of an ancient primitive idea. 
The archaic form for mu is an arrow with two short parallel lines crossing two 
others in the middle of the shaft, thus <~—-_ , these cross lines representing, in 
Dr. Hilprecht’s view, the marks cut on the shaft. Of course the early thick and 
somewhat concave cylinders of the time of Sargon I. can not have had such an origin. 
Even those of the period that are not hollowed on the surface are too thick to have 
originated in the shaft of an arrow. 
But there is another type of very archaic cylinder seals, usually uninscribed 
and apparently older than Sargon I., which presents a size and shape which might 
have had its origin in the shaft of an arrow. Such a cylinder is seen in fig. 18. 
A number of these will be shown in chapters on “Archaic Cylinders.” They are 
often very long and slender, and the vertical hole suggests a hollow reed-arrow. 
They are usually in two registers, the two separated generally by two lines in 
