Assyrian cylinder seals
The Assyrian cylinder seals were very regular and symmetrical. They were made of stones of varying hardness and colours, and various themes were carved on their surfaces according to personal taste.
These seals presented topics that were common in society at that time and deeply rooted in the thought of the Assyrians. For example, they showed legendary snapshots of scenes of the terrible conflict in the Babylonian creation story, and the starring role in them was assigned to the god (Assyria).
The Assyrian artist excelled in presenting these scenes crowded with figures, despite the limited space of solid stone available for sculpture at times.
The symbolic shapes in these seals represent symbols of the great art of that time, which we see in many scenes carved on cylinder seals from the Middle Assyrian era, where a large number of legendary figures and symbols were gathered that exceed their number, the shapes appearing on the facade of the Freedom Monument by the great Iraqi artist Jawad. Salim (which reaches fifty meters in length), as the Assyrian artist succeeded in condensing his symbols onto a narrow pictorial surface that does not exceed three centimeters in length!
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Source: History of Art in Mesopotamia - Zuhair Sahib / Part Three