Ancient near Eastern Seals in Birmingham Collections

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to make available to specialists and others interested the resources of Birmingham in the matter of ancient Near Eastern Seals. As would be expected, the lion's share comes from the City Museum, and I am indebted to Nicholas Thomas, Keeper of the Department of Archaeology, for permission to study and publish this material. His assistant, John Ruffle, has helped me by gathering the material together and in every other way. Miss Tess Martin, also of the City Museum, has kindly made impressions of all the seals published here.Of the 56 seals in the City Museum, 42, numbered 541’65–582’65, were received quite recently as a bequest from Air Commodore E. St. Clair Harnett. He served as an officer in the Royal Air Force in Iraq shortly after the First World War, and assisted the late Miss Gertrude Bell in her founding of the Baghdad Museum. He is mentioned in her letters as “Squadron Leader Harnett”, and it is appropriate that his collection should be published in Iraq, the Gertrude Bell Memorial. A notebook accompanying the seals records that they were collected in Baghdad between 1922 and 1927. Only in one case, now numbered 566’65, does it record the source of a seal, as Kish. Of the other 14 seals (all received from other donors), five, 552’62–556’62, were given by Woolley, and need not have come from Ur, since they are not included in the official publications.