Stamp seals, like cylinder seals, were used to identify articles and, later, documents as belonging to the owner of the seal.
Sacred Nandi Bull Seal
This is a replica of an engraved stamp and to the right of it, an example of the impressed seal it can produce. The original was recovered from the Indus Valley in Pakistan and has been dated to around 2100 BC.
Once thought of as "Unicorn Seals", scholars are now satisfied that the creature depicted is Nandi, a bull sacred to Shiva, standing before a ceremonial bowl. The seal includes pictographs that have been decyphered as saying,
A man is only half a man unless he travelsd straight and rapid like Rama's arrows.
The Veddic civilization of the indus Valley is reckoned to be contemporaneous with the Sumerian, coming to an end around 1500 BC.
These copies of stamp seals show how ownership of objects was marked, illustrating some of the common names in use. seals such as these would be attached to sacks, boxes and amphora. All date from around the same period.
Here are the seals, shown as a colour photograph on the left with a monochrome image of a similar impression on the right to bring out more of the detail.