7,000 year old symbols on seals discovered.in Isreal

[shunyadragon]

7,000 year old symbols on seals discovered in Israel that could have been an early symbolic writing,possibly the earliest ever found..

[cite=https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/archaeologists-find-unique-7-000-year-old-stamped-sealing-in-northern-israel-1.9891723]

Archaeologists Find Unique 7,000-year-old Stamped Sealing in Northern Israel

Predating writing by millennia, the clay impression – with two different stamps – is the oldest found in Israel and may have been used to protect the Neolithic village’s riches

A stamped seal impression around 7,000 years old, predating the invention of writing, has been found at Tel Tsaf, a prehistoric village in northern Israel that its excavators believe was an extraordinarily wealthy place, as Neolithic sites went.

The oldest discovery of its kind in Israel, the sealing attests to a primitive form of administration as early as the Middle Chalcolithic period, a team of archaeologists from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem reports in the journal Levant. It is also the earliest sign of administration to be identified in Israel.

To be clear, older seals have been found in Mesopotamia that date back to 8,500 years ago, but seal impressions from that time have not been found.

The stamped one and other sealings were found during excavations between 2004 and 2007. Commonly in archaeology, many finds are made during digging; they get packed away and can then be studied leisurely and thoroughly over years.




Actually, about 150 sealings from about the same time were found at Tel Tsaf, Garfinkel tells Haaretz – but this was the only one marked with stamping, and by two different stamps at that.
Open gallery view

The stamped sealing: Marking property before writing existedCredit: Tal RogovskiOpen gallery view

Sketch of the stamped sealingCredit: O. Dubovsky

[shunyadragon]

The pieces shown are examples of over 100 pieces of seals collected. Using a little fragment A could represent grain, B vegetable possibly cabbage, D possibly fruit or a wine maybe grape wine These would be types of food and drink commonly stored in clay containers with seals.

[rogue06]

Saw something concerning this last week.

Source: 7,000-year-old letter seal found in Israel hints at ancient long-distance trade

The tiny object is made up of two different stamps.

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The new seal impression and a modern imprint of its patterns.

Archaeologists recently discovered Israel's oldest known seal impression, a device that stamps a pattern onto soft material such as clay or wax in order to seal an object. The tiny clay impression dates back 7,000 years and was likely used to seal and sign deliveries, as well as to keep storerooms closed, according to a new study.

The research team discovered the seal, along with nearly 150 others, during excavations that took place between 2004 and 2007 in Tel Tsaf, a prehistoric village in Israel's Beit She'an Valley. But while most of the other seals were just pieces of clay without any imprints, one had an impression with two distinct geometric shapes on them, according to The Jerusalem Post.

After conducting a thorough analysis, archaeologists identified this object as the oldest seal impression known in the region, according to a statement. Prior to this discovery, older seals dating back 8,500 years had been found in the region, but seal impressions had not.

Prehistoric people used such sealings, or "bulla," to sign and seal letters to prevent them from being read by nosy outsiders. But they were also used to mark shipments and to indicate that silos or barns were off-limits. As with letters, if a barn door was opened, the seal would break, making it clear that someone had gone inside, according to the statement.

"Even today, similar types of sealing are used to prevent tampering and theft," senior author Yosef Garfinkel, a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said in a statement. "It turns out that this was already in use 7,000 years ago by land owners and local administrators to protect their property," said Garfinkel, who, with his two students at the time, led the excavation.

The ancient seal, which was found in great condition due to the dry climate of the area, is less than 0.4 inches (about a centimeter) wide and has two different stamps on it. The two different stamp patterns suggest that the seal may have been used in a commercial activity that involved two people in the transaction, according to the statement.

Many newer seals, such as those found in Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem from about 2,600 years ago, include a name and sometimes biblical figures. But this seal dates back to a time before writing, so it was marked by geometric shapes instead.

An analysis of the clay suggested that the seal wasn't actually made in the prehistoric Beit She'an Valley but originated at least 6 miles (10 kilometers) away. Other finds from the site, which was likely home to wealthy people who had built up large stores of materials, indicate that prehistoric people of the area interacted with faraway peoples.

"At this very site, we have evidence of contact with peoples from Mesopotamia, Turkey, Egypt and Caucasia [or Caucasus]," which includes a region spanning Europe and Asia, Garfinkel said in the statement. "There is no prehistoric site anywhere in the Middle East that reveals evidence of such long-distance trade in exotic items as what we found at this particular site."



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And here is the abstract from the paper A stamped sealing from Middle Chalcolithic Tel Tsaf: implications for the rise of administrative practices in the Levant:

Abstract

This article describes and discusses a stamped sealing found at Middle Chalcolithic Tel Tsaf (5th millennium BCE). This is the earliest stamped sealing found in the southern Levant. The article describes the object, as well as its petrographic composition, find-spot and parallels. Furthermore, the artefact’s implications for the rise of administrative practices in the Levant during the protohistoric periods are discussed.