Ancient near Eastern Cylinder Seals Acquired by the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford 1963-1973

Abstract

At his death in December 1976 Briggs W. Buchanan had been working on the collection of ancient Near Eastern seals in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, for the best part of thirty years. Illness had prevented any visits after the summer of 1974. The first fruits of his labours appeared in 1966 as a Catalogue of Ancient Near Eastern Seals in the Ashmolean Museum, I. Cylinder Seals. By early in the 1970's he had prepared a manuscript of the long-planned complementary stamp seal catalogue. A variety of problems hindered the final stages of revision and it will sadly be some years yet before a manuscript and illustrations suitable for publication can be made available. Buchanan had also drafted a concise handlist of all the cylinder seals acquired by the Ashmolean Museum after his first volume went to press in 1963, including a few seal impressions from Tell Brak and Kish overlooked in earlier years. He intended this to be an appendix to his second volume. As this volume is already of considerable size and treats a distinct aspect of ancient glyptic, it has been decided that a revised and extended version of this appendix should appear independently, so that it may more easily be used in conjunction with the cylinder seal catalogue. Virtually all the cylinder seals described here were acquired when Briggs Buchanan was not in Oxford; but his comments on them were always eagerly awaited, and readily given, when he arrived for his almost annual summer visits between 1963 and 1974.