Protoliterate Mesopotamia
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Glasgow Museums has a collection of approximately 21 Protoliterate artefacts from the historical region of Mesopotamia. These date from 3800 to 3000 BC. This collection includes eight stone stamp seals, most of which are drilled stamp designs with simple geometric arrangements of dots and lines. There are schematic animals – a figurine of a bull and four stone pendants in the shapes of a ram, a duck, a hare and a bird. The collection also holds a cylinder seal, used to impress a continuous decorative frieze when rolled over soft clay, which shows a procession of three antelopes. In addition, there are four stone cult vessels depicting bulls, which would have been used in temple rituals, and three stone vessels without relief decoration – a dish, bowl and jar, the latter possibly for use in a temple cult. Mesopotamian civilization emerged in the area now encompassed by Iraq, Syria and western Iran during the course of the 4th millennium BC. During this period settlements grew into cities, monumental temples were built and long-distance trade developed throughout the region. Seals were widely used to mark the ownership of property and writing was invented to record economic transactions.
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