Seals

The seal designs of the Early Dynastic Period and later periods are rooted in the brocade style of the Protoliterate Period. The brocade style emphasized design over subject, featuring simple figures repeated to create a continuous picture. In the Early Dynastic Period, the seals often feature fantastical figures, such as human-headed bulls and lion-headed eagles. Toward the end of the Early Dynastic III, seal designs began to introduce breaks between figures, sacrificing the coherence of the whole image in order to depict figures with more substance.