According to some sources, cylinder seals were invented around 3500 BC in the Near East, at the contemporary sites of Uruk in southern Mesopotamia and slightly later at Susa in south-western Iran during the Proto-Elamite period, and they follow the development of stamp seals in the Halaf culture or slightly earlier.
[5][6] Other sources, however, date the earliest cylinder seals to a much earlier time, to the Late Neolithic period (7600-6000 BC) in Syria, hundreds of years before the invention of writing.
They survive in fairly large numbers and are important as art, especially in the Babylonian and earlier Assyrian periods.
Many varieties of material such as hematite, obsidian, steatite, amethyst, lapis lazuli and carnelian were used to make cylinder seals.
[9] Most seals have a hole running through the centre of the body, and they are thought to have typically been worn on a necklace to be always available when needed.