The History of Printmaking Across the Arab World: Part 1

Printmaking has a long and rich history in today's Arab region. While this artistic tradition has often been overshadowed in global discourse, its five-thousand-year evolution is intricately linked to the broader region's cultural, religious, and technological developments. From the ancient Mesopotamian cylinder seals to contemporary fine art printmaking, we will explore the trajectory of printmaking (including banknotes, text, literature, ornamental and fine art) in today's Arab region, while examining its aesthetics, historical underpinnings, technological advancements, and role in shaping socio-political narratives and artistic innovation.

We can trace the first two categories of printmaking, relief and intaglio impression, to 3200 BCE with the invention of stamp and cylinder seal printing, 300 years after the creation of the first known writing system, Cuneiform, in southern Mesopotamia, present-day Iraq. During this period, rulers sought to memorialize themselves and their gods in the palaces and temples they built by stamping an inscription onto building bricks. 

To do so, Mesopotamians created a stone mold where they would carve away the areas that were not to be printed, leaving behind a raised surface of the image intended to be printed, a technique known as relief. They would then stamp the soft clay of the bricks with the carved stone before firing it to leave the impression indented beneath the surface. In a similar but opposite technique, Mesopotamians formed cylinder seals from stone, marble, gold, silver, or semiprecious stones. They would engrave or incise the desired design into the cylinder's surface (or matrix), a technique known as intaglio. This mold was then rolled over soft clay, thus imprinting a continuously raised impression of the design above the main surface. Pierced through from end to end to be worn on a string, cylinder seals functioned as administrative signatures to notarize clay documents and were embellished with images and cuneiform writing