Table 1 Some of the common and expected functionalities of the inscriptions and iconographies of seals stamped on commercial documents or merchandise packages.

Functionality-1: Encoding relevant

anthroponyms

Authenticating stamped merchandise-packages and documents by encoding the anthroponyms of their individual owners or endorsers.

The royal-name scarabs and private-name scarabs used in the Old-Kingdom and Middle-Kingdom era of Egypt (Wegner, 2018 pp.239–242; Ben-Tor, 2018 pp.293–298).

Functionality-2:

Encoding relevant toponyms

Encoding certain toponymic information related to the stamped merchandise (e.g., origins and/or destinations of the merchandise) or stamped documents (e.g., the place where the document was registered).

Many of the ancient “Yehud stamp-impressions” found on jars, bearing the toponym “Yehud” (Lipschits & Vanderhooft, 2011).

Seals of Seleucid Babylonia, bearing city-names as part of their legends (McDowell, 1935).

Functionality-3: Encoding organization names

Mentioning names and/or emblems of the seal-issuing entities (e.g., rulers, royal departments, settlement-authorities, guilds, etc.) through texts and/or iconographies.

The institutional seals of ancient Egypt often encoded names of various institutions and departments, such as “Treasury of Abydos”, “storehouse”, “the treasury of the fortress overthrowing the ‘Bow-people’ [i.e.,: Nubians]”, etc. (Wegner, 2018 p.249; Smith, 2018 p.303).

Functionality-4: Mentioning rules and regulations

Encoding certain predefined taxation, licensing, and trade/craft-control related commercial rules, for ensuring their observance by stamped merchandise or documents.

In Seleucid Babylonia, seals mentioning different tax-types, such as salt-tax, slave-tax, port-dues, etc., were used, whose impressions on various bullae endorsed satisfaction of the taxation-rules applicable to specific transactions (McDowell, 1935). Similarly, in modern era USA, stamp-seals often contain texts like “Tax paid stamp for colored oleomargarine,” “State tax paid,” etc.

Functionality-5: Specifying types of contents of the sealed packages

Encoding the types and contents of the stamped merchandise or documents, either directly, or indirectly.

Certain ancient Mesopotamian seals used specific iconographies and proto-cuneiform signs for encoding specific commodity-types (Ameri, 2018 pp.36–53).

Certain sealings found among the remains of wooden boxes and hundreds of bronze points at an arsenal at the Mycenaean Knossos, were inscribed with the appropriate logogram of a spear-point (Linear B *254), most likely to identify the contents for delivery (Ameri, 2018 p. 351).

As recorded in Kautilya’s Arthaśāstra (2.21.01–2.21.06), in ancient India of c. 300 BC (or earlier), the seal-impressions on incoming merchandise-packages of merchants were examined by tax-collectors at toll-houses erected near city-gateways, for checking whether the commodity-type mentioned in the seal-mark matched the actual commodity of the merchandise-package, to ensure that the merchandise were properly measured and taxed (Shamasastry, 1929 p.121). This clearly shows that in ancient India, specific kinds of tax-collection seals were used for specific commodity types, and those seals’ impressions encoded commodity-type related information.

Functionality-6:

Ensuring integrities of the sealed packages

Indicating the integrity of the content of a stamped package or document. Importantly, just the presence of a recognizable, undamaged seal-impression of the right authority on a closure system of a merchandise package or a document, can ensure their integrity, irrespective of the types of designs, iconographies, or texts used on the seal.

In ancient Mesopotamia, “textual sources give detailed information for the use of seals to protect packed merchandise against pilfering. On the arrival of the goods at their destination, the seals were broken open and the contents weighed and checked, in the presence of witnesses” (Parpola, 2018 p. 141). Similarly, phrases like “Do not purchase if seal is broken” are often used on sealed packages of various modern merchandise.