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Post by sheshki on Dec 7, 2008 15:23:41 GMT -5
****The goal of this thread is to create a pool for general information about cylinderseals **** Cylinderseals from
The Walters Art MuseumHere are some cylinderseals from the Walters Art Museum collection found through CDLI. I chose the ones made of precious minerals.Maybe one of you is into minerals and know what they are made of.CDLI does not give any information about the materials. The numbers under the pictures are the CDLI numbers.  P272840  P272844, lapis-lazuli  P272845  P272847, maybe rose quartz  P272860  P272862, mountain crystal  P272864  P272865, maybe agate  P272866, mountain crystal  P272867  P272868  P272869  P272870  P272874  P272876, lapis -lazuli  P272877, fluoride  P272879  P272882  P272883  P272884, agate |
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Post by sheshki on Dec 7, 2008 16:24:36 GMT -5
Another very interesting cylinderseal from the collection of the Walters Art Museum is this one.  The text says : 1. lugal KA-GI-UL 2. dub-sar 3. dumu ur-dingir-ra which means: Lugal Kagiul, scribe, son of Urdingirra. And the seal itself displays a scene where the Lugal is led to a sitting god by a goddess. What confuses me here is the fact that he calls himself a scribe. Was that usual? I never heard of that before... I call for experts help  The Lugal also looks more like a priest or a scibe then a king...  Also interesting is the symbol at the seal.  First i thought it represents the sun, but it could also represent the venus. On the next picture you can see, from left to right, Venus(Inanna), Moon (Sin) and the Sun(Utu),  and if you put all 3 over each other you get exactly the symbol from the seal. So it represents the holy trinity, Utu, Sin and Inanna. I think this style of symbol was created because of the limited space given on the seal. |
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Post by sheshki on Feb 20, 2009 16:06:08 GMT -5
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Post by sheshki on Feb 20, 2009 16:33:58 GMT -5
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Post by sheshki on Feb 27, 2009 17:03:09 GMT -5
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Post by sheshki on Mar 4, 2009 7:23:02 GMT -5
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Post by sheshki on Mar 4, 2009 8:32:20 GMT -5
Not a cylinder seal but also very nice  STAMP SEAL in shape of a reclining bull; bottom has seal design showing two feet material: calcite (colored with serpentine) provenience: Tell Agrab, Shara Temple date: Early Dynastic II (ca. 2,600 B.C.) Find Number: Ag. 35:658 Museum: Oriental Institute Museum Museum Number: A18608 |
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Post by xuchilpaba on Mar 6, 2009 14:06:04 GMT -5
I never knew the Mesopotamians used so much crystal. I love the "holy trinity". Is there any scholarship on it other than the seals?
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Post by sheshki on Mar 8, 2009 19:37:59 GMT -5
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Post by sheshki on Dec 10, 2010 15:59:07 GMT -5
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Post by sheshki on Feb 24, 2011 6:54:14 GMT -5
from
"Civilisation of the Ancient Near East",
chapter
"Cylinder Seals and Scarabs in the Ancient Near East" by Holly Pittman
The origin and early development of seals
The earliest unequivocal evidence for carved objects used systematically as seals comes from Arpachyiah in northern Iraq in levels dated to the Halaf period, around 5500. There, clay tags and round clay disks were found stamped with seals engraved with a series of fine, closely placed incised lines. While no two of the stamps were engraved in precisely the same fashion, it is obvious that the shapes of the seals, not the designs carved on them, are what significantly differs among them. Seven shapes can easily be distinguished : hands, feet, crescents, lozenges, circles, squares, rectangles. Impressions of these differently shaped seals were combined on single clay disks. Given the careful and consistent application of these impressions, it seems obvious that they were applied intentionally and that the combination of shapes must have conveyed pertinent information.
to be continued...
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Post by sheshki on Feb 25, 2011 15:24:34 GMT -5
from
"Civilisation of the Ancient Near East",
chapter
"Cylinder Seals and Scarabs in the Ancient Near East" by Holly Pittman
The First Cylinder Seals
Although we are never likely to retrieve the first cylinder seal, recent excavations allow us to describe the social eviroment in which this new, radically different glyptic shape was invented.The earliest archeological evidence for the use of cylinder seals comes from the thrash pits of a small site in southwestern Iran called Sharafabad,where impressions of engraved cylinder seals were found mixed with Middle Uruk pottery dated to around 3700. From slightly later, both at the large site of Uruk (modern Warka in southern Mesopotamia and at Susa (biblical Shushan, modern Shush) in Iranian Khuzestan, we find preserved the full range of administrative documents and tools, including abundant evidence for seals. While locks for the doors for storage rooms and sealings over the cords securing the contents of vessels and other containers continued to be marked with seals, the Uruk and Susa evidence clearly indicates a need to record information that would soon lead to the invention of writing. Cylinder seals are closely associated with that process.
to be continued...
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Post by sheshki on Feb 25, 2011 15:41:21 GMT -5
from
"Civilisation of the Ancient Near East",
chapter
"Cylinder Seals and Scarabs in the Ancient Near East" by Holly Pittman
Distribution of Seals
During the more than three thousand years in which clay was used as the primary medium for cuneiform writing, the cylinder was the predominant shape for seals. Anywhere that the cuneiform script was used to record the native language, the cylinder seal was also used. Thus, the Hittites of Anatolia, the Elamites of Iran, and the Urartians in Armenia all used cylinder seals for administrative purposes. In addition, Egypt, with its hieroglyphic script, and the nonliterate cultures of Bactria in central Asia and the Iranian Plateau also used cylinder seals, particularly during the third millenium and the early part of the second. A lively and original style of cylinder-seal carving also flourished in preliterate cyprus at the same time.
In Mesopotamia, cylinder seals fell out of fashion only when the aramaic script using ink on papyrus, parchment, or leather, began to replace cuneiform toward the middle of the first millennium.
t.b.c...
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Post by sheshki on Feb 25, 2011 15:56:17 GMT -5
from
"Civilisation of the Ancient Near East",
chapter
"Cylinder Seals and Scarabs in the Ancient Near East" by Holly Pittman
The Making of Seals
The Sumerian term for seal cutter is BUR.GUL; the Akkadian is purkullu. It is likely of the consistency of style and iconography that seal cutters worked in workshops, at least in the large centers. It is possible that in some periods, seal cutters travelled from job to job or court to court. In several specific instances, stylistic analysis has allowed scholars to link seals from different locales to a single workshop, perhaps even to a single seal-carver.
We guess that seal cutters shared the same social status as other craftsmen.
Archeologists working in Mesopotamia, Syria, and Iran have found what they identify as tools for manufacturing seals or, as likely, stone beads for jewelry that were found together with seal blanks and chipped stone debris. The relativly soft stones, calcites, limestones, and steatites, would have been drilled or engraved with tools made either of chipped stone or of copper.
During all periods, an abrasive such as emery or sand was used to perform the actual cutting of the stone.
The most commom material used for seals, either stamps or cylinders, was stone, but other materials, including metals (particularly copper, or bronze, silver, and gold), were also used.
Another material used occasionally was clay, either baked or unbaked.
The most common stones used for seals during the fourth and third millennia were dark-green or gray steatites, serpentines, and limestones or calcites, usually white, pink, or green. One distinctive material used in this early period was the gray-green heulandite for Proto-Elamite seals of the early third millenium in Iran. Toward the middle of the third millennium, lapis lazuli was used for seals for the first time in large quantities.
Colorful, hard stones, green and red jaspers, banded agates, and dark green serpentines were favoured in mesopotamia during the Akkadian period of the late third millennium. Although rock crystal, an extremly hard transparent quartz, was only rarely carved into seals in the earlier periods, the Akkadians used it with some frequency.
For about sixhundret years, from the beginning of the Third Dynasty of Ur period until the fall of the Old Babylonian dynasty, virtually the only stone used for seals was hematite, the hard, shiny, gray stone found in abundance in the Zagros mountains. Other stones, including rock crystals, are mentioned frequently in the texts of the Old Babylonian period as gifts between rulers. Color continued as an important factor in the choice of the material from the middle of the second millennium, when cryptocrystalline quartz, such as chalcedony, and banded agates were used for the very finest seals of the Kassites, Assyrians, and Babylonians.
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Post by sheshki on Feb 25, 2011 17:36:45 GMT -5
from
"Civilisation of the Ancient Near East",
chapter
"Cylinder Seals and Scarabs in the Ancient Near East"
by Holly Pittman
Seal Imagery
During the first five hundret years of seal use in Mesopotamia, that is the preliterate and proto-literate phases until around 2900, the subject matter on cylinder seals was varied and included diverse representations of economic activities, such as scenes of textile, vessel, and probably food production. Another commonly recurring image is the procession scene, where various products, including
jewelry, garments, and seemingly more mundane provisions are shown. A variety of rituals that were likely performed in the temple are also depicted on seals of this period.
These action scenes for the most part disappear at the beginning of the Early Dynastic period and are replaced by a far more narrow range of images in which two themes dominate: the combat scene between heroic men and wild beasts or mythical creatures, and the banquet scene. Only toward the end of the Early Dynastic period, around 2400, are divine figures, identified by their horned headdress, prominent in scenes of ritual building of a stepped structure. Another prominent divine image in this period is the god boat.
During the Akkadian period (about 2250), there was a revival of what might be considered action scenes, but this time, the subjects were not drawn from workplace but from the divine, the mythological, or the epic realms. Only a very few, quite distant echoes of these lively scenes can be found in the texts. It was at this time that the presentation theme was introduced; it then dominated glyptic art from the Ur III period until the time of Hammurabi. While duiring the Akkadian period, the presentation scene depicted primarily divine or mythical figures, in the URIII period this scene, as an official image of the state bureaucracy, expanded to include the presentation of humans to the enthroned deified king. The imagery on an official´s seal was one way by which his status would be marked. During the Old Babylonian period the presentation scene was gradually replaced by representation of various standing deities, often accompanied by the protective goddess Lama and by an ever-increasing number of divine symbols. Influence from the Aegean and Egypt can be detected in the seal imagery of the Middle Assyrians and Kassites, with the sudden appearence of elements of landscape and of vigorous and realistc movements of heroes and monsters. This increased naturalism was balanced by an increase in the use of divine symbols in combination with long prayerful inscriptions. In the Neo-Assyrian period, scenes in a landscape setting were replaced by a return to more-emblematic representation of gods, scenes of worship and combat, and royal figures.
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Post by sheshki on Feb 26, 2011 16:37:22 GMT -5
from
"Civilisation of the Ancient Near East",
chapter
"Cylinder Seals and Scarabs in the Ancient Near East"
by Holly Pittman
Who Owned Seals
Although the distribution of seals varied from period to period, all kinds of people owned seals. ...In the middle of the Early Dynastic period, around 2600, inscriptions identifying the seal owner appeared, giving the name and, more rarely, the title or the patronymic of the seal owner. We know that in Akkadian period, scribes, cooks, priests, servants of the king, soldiers, carpenters, and other craftsmen owned seals, although we have very little trace of their actual use in economic administration.
Votive and Divine Seals
Especially in Mesopotamia, seals were often deposited in temples as gifts to the gods. Hundreds of seals from the first half of the third Millennium, mostly uninscribed, were found in the temples of Sin and Shara at Tell Asmar (ancient Eshnunna) and Khafaje (ancient Tutub) in the Diyala region. Seals with dedicatory inscriptions to the gods, usually for the life of the owner or for his ruler, first appeared in the Akkadian period. The inscriptions on such votive seals would be written not in mirror writing, which was used for seals meant to be impressed, but positively, so that the signs could be read on the seal itself. As with all votive inscriptions, they conveyed in perpetuity the prayer of the donor. Many such seals were listed in temple inventories.
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Post by sheshki on Aug 26, 2012 14:52:47 GMT -5
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Post by sheshki on Dec 8, 2012 8:06:35 GMT -5
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Post by sheshki on Apr 9, 2013 8:25:40 GMT -5
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Post by sheshki on Jul 22, 2013 6:55:35 GMT -5
The mark of ancient man : ancient Near Eastern stamp seals and cylinder seals : the Gorelick Collection / by Madeline Noveck. ---> Link
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Post by hukkana on Aug 30, 2015 8:09:35 GMT -5
I'm rather interested in that Amorite seal, because I don't remember ever running across a seal of this kind with any of the represented figures looking "out" at the viewer !
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Post by hukkana on Aug 30, 2015 17:20:04 GMT -5
Are there any examples of such art from the heartland of Sumer ? I see a figure turned to the observer in the Mitanni and Kassite seals, but I meant one directly from that region if at all possible. Were there any similar Syriac seals discovered ? |
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Post by sheshki on Aug 31, 2015 6:45:39 GMT -5
Hukkana, i strongly recommend visiting museum websites like the Louvre, the MET, British Museum and so on. CDLI has cylinder seals as well, including information. Also there are lots of books about cylinder seals. You may find sources for your research as well further up in this thread. We don´t have the time to do the research for you...also where is the fun in getting all the information on a silver platter |
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Post by hukkana on Aug 31, 2015 8:37:00 GMT -5
Hukkana, i strongly recommend visiting museum websites like the Louvre, the MET, British Museum and so on. CDLI has cylinder seals as well, including information. Also there are lots of books about cylinder seals. You may find sources for your research as well further up in this thread. We don´t have the time to do the research for you...also where is the fun in getting all the information on a silver platter In saving me time so I can go through 600 something pages of god names from the Hittie Pantheon ? : P I mostly jest, but what I was getting at: I gathered quite a few pictures of interesting looking seals during my research, but what astonished me is, though I do believe I may have seen some seals with a standing deity facing the viewer, I don't recall the enthroned god/goddess ever doing the same, especially not in a scene where apparently a worshipper is coming towards them from the side ! |
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Post by hukkana on Oct 30, 2015 7:16:48 GMT -5
I hope I can share something which, though off topic slightly, is related mostly in the distinct way the material is presented. Specifically, this is the top portion of a pillar discovered in Jawf in 2004, as part of the Temple of the Aranyada, the Chief God of the Ancient South Arabian Kingdom of Nashshan. The pillar apparently shows some similarities to decorations from Saba, and it appears to contain the images of not only the Chief deities of Nashshan (Aranyada) and Saba (Almaqah), but also of Inabba (Hawar), Haram (Yada'sumhu), Kaminahu (Naba'l) and Ma'in (Wadd and Nakrah). The first register originally showed the God Attar and another deity, whose identity is unknown. The interesting part according to Alessandra Avanzini (The Sabaean Presence in Jawf in the Eighth-Seventh Centuries BC) is the distinctly non-South Arabic character of the decorations, which according to Avanzini seem to be derived from contacts with Mesopotamia. To quote Avanzini:  _ |
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Post by sheshki on Feb 5, 2017 9:53:57 GMT -5
A nice overview of collections of cylinder seals in central europe by K. Wagensonner >>>link<<<< |
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