Script without Reading: The Social Life of Cuneiform in the Bronze Age Levant

ToRS Ancient Studies Lecture Series: A talk with with Prof Jana Mynářová, Charles University Prague

This talk examines small carved cylinders, known as cylinder seals, from the southern Levant. When rolled across wet clay, these seals created images and, in some cases, containing cuneiform signs. Some of the seals carry real cuneiform inscriptions that can be read. Others display marks that look like cuneiform but do not form meaningful words.

Why would someone use a seal that looked as though it contained writing if nobody could read it? This question opens a wider discussion about the social value of writing in the Bronze Age. A genuinely inscribed seal could connect its owner with administration, record-keeping, and literate institutions. A pseudo-cuneiform seal could create a similar impression. Its signs may have been unreadable, but they still looked like the prestigious writing system used in Mesopotamia and Syria. The visual appearance of cuneiform could therefore communicate authority, high status, foreign connections, or familiarity with elite culture.

Using archaeological find contexts, seal designs, and comparisons with seals from northern Syria and Mesopotamia, this talk argues that pseudo-cuneiform seals were not simply clumsy or unsuccessful attempts at writing. They represent a deliberate and distinctive tradition. Emerging in the Middle Bronze Age and influenced especially by northern Levantine and Old Assyrian seal styles, these objects show how writing could be meaningful even without being read. Their use, which continued into the Hellenistic period, also illustrates how communities in the southern Levant used images, scripts, and objects to negotiate identity and participation in wider regional networks."

For more information or questions, contact Seraina Nett (snett@hum.ku.dk)

ToRS Ancient Studies lecture series

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