The ancient cuneiform script was also influenced by the figurative language of clay seals

World the oldest known writing system was created in Mesopotamia around 3,200 BC.

This one cuneiform that is, the creation of cuneiform writing was also influenced by the symbols of the seals used in trade.

Seals, on which numerous engravings have been found, were used to exchange agricultural products and textiles.

Early versions of seals were printed on clay in southern Mesopotamia. Their symbols were used in trade in what is now southern Iraq.

The symbols often referred to transported goods, for example fabrics and various dishes.

The seals told about the owner of the object or product.

Seals were often cylindrical.

Their many images were one way towards cuneiform writing. They were accounts that could be used to track the production, storage and transportation of supplies and objects.

Researchers from the Italian University of Bologna who studied the seals report their findings and the interpretations of the seals In Antiquity magazine.

A cylindrical seal leaves a rectangular collection of symbols in the clay when it is rolled over a wet clay plate, writes the website Live Science.

Cylindrical seals were used in Mesopotamia for millennia. Often any shipment was confirmed with a seal, later also ordinary letters.

Some of the seals studied by the University of Bologna date back to around 4,400 BC. So they were used more than a thousand years before cuneiform writing was developed.

“We focused on seals that were created before the invention of writing,” say Ferrara’s colleagues and study authors Kathryn Kelley and Mattia Cartolano.

They are both scholars of classical philology and Italian at the University of Bologna.

Seals was used dispersedly in different places in the region of southern Mesopotamia. So many different people influenced what symbols were used, says New Scientist.

“We followed the development of the writing system in a way that is more colorful than usual,” says the classical philologist Silvia Ferrara from the University of Bologna in Italy.

Cuneiform script the origin has usually been traced to clay markers or tablets with pictographs. They were used in different forms, for example discs and balls.

Now clay seals are brought alongside. The idea is not new. Clay seals were presented by Middle Eastern historian and archaeologist Holly Pittman from the University of Pennsylvania already in 1994.

He now says he is pleased that a new generation of researchers has embraced his ideas.

At one time, his ideas were dismissed “without serious consideration,” he tells New Scientist.