page_title: Stamp seal
section_title: Indus stamp-seal
hierarchical_section_title: Stamp seal / Indus stamp-seal
caption_attribution_description: English: Indus stamp-seal 2500BC-2000BC. This stamp featured in the BBC/BM radio series 'A History of the World in 100 objects' as noted in the BM display. Previously thought to depict a unicorn, now thought to be a bull.
context_page_description: The stamp seal is a carved object, usually stone, first made in the 4th millennium BC, and probably earlier. They were used to impress their picture or inscription into soft, prepared clay.
  Seal devices have seldom survived through time; it is usually only their impressions. A major exception are the cylinder seals made of stone, of which examples of their ancient impressions have survived as well, the majority being of clay tablets sealed as an authentication.
  The Halaf culture saw the earliest known appearance of stamp seals in the Near East.
context_section_description: Different from the Minoan stamp-seals, the Indus stamp-seals probably have a different function from the stamp seals of the Minoan civilization, as they typically have script characters, with still undeciphered associations.
caption: Indus seal, (with modern impression); from ca. mid- to late-3rd millennium BC.(?)
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