A merchant's mark is an emblem or device adopted by a merchant, and placed on goods or products sold by him in order to keep track of them, or as a sign of authentication. It may also be used as a mark of identity in other contexts.
A merchant's mark is an emblem or device adopted by a merchant, and placed on goods or products sold by him in order to keep track of them, or as a sign of authentication. It may also be used as a mark of identity in other contexts.
Merchants' marks are as old as the sealings of the third millennium BCE found in Sumer that originated in the Indus Valley. [1] Impressions of cloth, strings and other packing material on the reverse of tags with seal impressions indicate that the Harappan seals were used to control economic administration and trade. [2] [3] Amphorae from the Roman Empire can sometimes be traced to their sources from the inscriptions on their handles. Commercial inscriptions in Latin, known as tituli picti, appear on Roman containers used for trade. [4]
Symbolic merchants' marks continued to be used by artisans and townspeople of the medieval and early modern eras [5] to identify themselves and authenticate their goods. These distinctive and easily recognizable marks often appeared in their seals on documents and on products made for sale. They are often found on headstones and in works of stained glass, [6] brass, and stone, serving in place of heraldic imagery, which could not be used by the middle classes. They were the precursors of hallmarks, printer's marks, [7] and trademarks.
To manage the risks of piracy or shipwreck, merchants often consigned a cargo to several vessels or caravans; a mark on a bale established legal ownership and avoided confusion. Early travellers, voyagers and merchants displayed their merchant's marks as well to ward off evil. Adventurous travellers and sailors ascribed the terrors and perils of their life to the wrath of the Devil. To counter these dangers merchants employed all sorts of religious and magical means to place their caravans, ships and merchandise under the protection of God and His Saints.
One such symbol combined the mystical "Sign of Four" with the merchant's name or initials. The "Sign of Four" [8] was an outgrowth of an ancient symbol adopted by the Romans and by Christianity, Chi Rho (XP), standing for the first two letters of Christus in Greek letters; this was simplified to a reversed "4" in Medieval times. The evolution of this symbol is shown in M. J. Shah's article. [9] The "Sign of Four" is called the "Staff of Mercury" (Caduceus) in German and Scandinavian literature on house marks. [10]
The joint stock company or limited liability company was another way to reduce a merchant's risks of loss of ships and merchandise from dangerous voyages and travel. By royal charter a monopoly was assured and a merchant's personal liability was limited to the amount of his own investment. If a voyage succeeded the gains accrued to all of the investors in proportion to their invested capital shares. Modern institutions, corporations and trademarks, find some of their origins in these symbolic and legal devices for limiting physical and pecuniary risks.[ citation needed ]
When the East India Company was chartered by Elizabeth I, Queen of England in 1600 it was still customary for each merchant or Company of Merchant Adventurers to have a distinguishing mark which included the "Sign of Four" and served as a trademark. The East India Company's mark was made up from a '+', a '4' and the initials EIC.
This mark forms the central emblem displayed on the Scinde Dawk postage stamps. [11] Also, it was a central motif of the East India Company's coinage. [12]
A merchant is a person who trades in commodities produced by other people, especially one who trades with foreign countries. Merchants have been known for as long as humans have engaged in trade and commerce. Merchants and merchant networks operated in ancient Babylonia, Assyria, China, Egypt, Greece, India, Persia, Phoenicia and Rome. During the European medieval period, a rapid expansion in trade and commerce led to the rise of a wealthy and powerful merchant class. The European Age of Discovery opened up new trading routes and gave European consumers access to a much broader range of goods. By the 18th century, a new type of manufacturer-merchant had started to emerge and modern business practices were becoming evident.
A seal is a device for making an impression in wax, clay, paper, or some other medium, including an embossment on paper, and is also the impression thus made. The original purpose was to authenticate a document, or to prevent interference with a package or envelope by applying a seal which had to be broken to open the container.
The Indus Valley Civilisation (IVC), also known as the Indus Civilisation, was a Bronze Age civilisation in the northwestern regions of South Asia, lasting from 3300 BCE to 1300 BCE, and in its mature form from 2600 BCE to 1900 BCE. Together with ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, it was one of three early civilisations of North Africa, Southwest Asia and South Asia, and of the three, the most widespread, its sites spanning an area including much of modern-day Pakistan, northwestern India and northeast Afghanistan. The civilisation flourished both in the alluvial plain of the Indus River, which flows through the length of Pakistan, and along a system of perennial monsoon-fed rivers that once coursed in the vicinity of the Ghaggar-Hakra, a seasonal river in northwest India and eastern Pakistan.
Indian postal systems for efficient military and governmental communications had developed long before the arrival of Europeans. When the Portuguese, Dutch, French, Danish and British conquered the Marathas who had already defeated the Mughals, their postal systems existed alongside those of many somewhat independent states. The British East India Company gradually annexed the other powers on the sub-continent and brought into existence a British administrative system over most of modern-day India, with a need to establish and maintain both official and commercial mail systems.
Meluḫḫa or Melukhkha is the Sumerian name of a prominent trading partner of Sumer during the Middle Bronze Age. Its identification remains an open question, but most scholars associate it with the Indus Valley Civilisation.
The Indus script, also known as the Harappan script and the Indus Valley Script, is a corpus of symbols produced by the Indus Valley Civilisation. Most inscriptions containing these symbols are extremely short, making it difficult to judge whether or not they constituted a writing system used to record a Harappan language, any of which are yet to be identified. Despite many attempts, the "script" has not yet been deciphered. There is no known bilingual inscription to help decipher the script, which shows no significant changes over time. However, some of the syntax varies depending upon location.
The LMLK seal appears on the handles of several large storage jars from the Kingdom of Judah, where it was first issued during the reign of Hezekiah around 700 BCE. Seals bearing these four Hebrew letters have been discovered primarily on unearthed artifacts in and around Jerusalem, with some in northern Israel. Several complete jars were found in situ at the ancient city of Lachish, where they were buried underneath a destruction layer caused by Sennacherib, who reigned over the Neo-Assyrian Empire from 705 BCE to 681 BCE. While none of the original stamp seals have been found, some 2,000 impressions made by at least 21 seal types have been published. The iconography of the two- and four-winged symbols are representative of royal symbols whose meaning "was tailored in each kingdom to the local religion and ideology".
Scinde Dawk was a postal system of runners that served the Indus Valley of Sindh, an area of present-day Pakistan. The term also refers to the first adhesive postage stamps in Asia, the forerunners of the adhesive stamps used throughout India, Burma, the Straits Settlements and other areas controlled by the British East India Company. The name derives from the words "Scinde", the British spelling of the name of the province of Sindh, and "Dawk", the anglicised spelling of the Hindustani word "Dak" or Post.
A cylinder seal is a small round cylinder, typically about one inch in width, engraved with written characters or figurative scenes or both, used in ancient times to roll an impression onto a two-dimensional surface, generally wet clay. According to some sources, cylinder seals were invented around 3500 BC in the Near East, at the contemporary sites of Uruk in southern Mesopotamia and slightly later at Susa in south-western Iran during the Proto-Elamite period, and they follow the development of stamp seals in the Halaf culture or slightly earlier. They are linked to the invention of the latter's cuneiform writing on clay tablets. Other sources, however, date the earliest cylinder seals to a much earlier time, to the Late Neolithic period in Syria, hundreds of years before the invention of writing.
The stamp seal is a common seal die, frequently carved from stone, known at least since the 6th millennium BC and probably earlier. The dies were used to impress their picture or inscription into soft, prepared clay and sometimes in sealing wax.
A tamga or tamgha was an abstract seal or brand used by Eurasian nomads initially as a livestock branding, and by cultures influenced by them. The tamga was used as a livestock branding for a particular tribe, clan or family. They were common among the Eurasian nomads throughout Classical Antiquity and the Middle Ages. As clan and family identifiers, the collection and systematic comparison of tamgas is regarded to provide insights into relations between families, individuals and ethnic groups in the steppe territory.
Dholavira is an archaeological site at Khadirbet in Bhachau Taluka of Kutch District, in the state of Gujarat in western India, which has taken its name from a modern-day village 1 kilometre (0.62 mi) south of it. This village is 165 km (103 mi) from Radhanpur. Also known locally as Kotada timba, the site contains ruins of a city of the ancient Indus Valley civilization. Earthquakes have repeatedly affected Dholavira, including a particularly severe one around 2600 BCE.
A bulla is an inscribed clay, soft metal, bitumen, or wax token used in commercial and legal documentation as a form of authentication and for tamper-proofing whatever is attached to it.
St Mary's Creative Space, formerly the Church of St Mary-on-the-Hill, stands at the top of St Mary's Hill, Chester, Cheshire, England, near Chester Castle. It is recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a designated Grade I listed building. The church stands at the top of a narrow winding lane which leads down to the River Dee, and it is adjacent to Chester Castle. In the 1970s the church was converted into an educational centre. It is currently available for use as a concert and exhibition venue and the Chester Music Society hold many concerts there throughout the year. The venue is programmed by Theatre in the Quarter, and hosts a variety of art and cultural events, from homegrown Cestrian performers, national and international acts.
St Mary's Church stands in an isolated position to the south of the village of Tilston, Cheshire, England. The church is recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a designated Grade II* listed building. It is an active Anglicanparish church in the diocese of Chester, the archdeaconry of Chester, and the deanery of Malpas. Its benefice is combined with that of St Edith, Shocklach.
Sembiyankandiyur is an archaeological site in Nagapattinam district in Tamil Nadu, India.
The Scinde, Punjab, Delhi Railway was formed in 1870 from the incorporation of the Scinde Railway, Indus Steam Flotilla, Punjab Railway and Delhi Railway companies. This was covered by the Scinde Railway Company's Amalgamation Act 1869.
Indus–Mesopotamia relations are thought to have developed during the second half of 3rd millennium BCE, until they came to a halt with the extinction of the Indus valley civilization after around 1900 BCE. Mesopotamia had already been an intermediary in the trade of lapis lazuli between the Indian subcontinent and Egypt since at least about 3200 BCE, in the context of Egypt-Mesopotamia relations.
Richard Marks, is a British art historian. He has held a number of curating and academic posts in art history in the United Kingdom and researched and written extensively on medieval religious images in a variety of media, including stained glass and illuminated manuscripts.