Biblical Period Personal Seals in the Shlomo Moussaieff Collection

Abstract

Biblical Period Personal Seals in the Shlomo Moussaieff Collection, by Robert Deutsch and Andrew Lemaire. Tel Aviv: Archaeological Center Publications, 2000. Pp. 228. $180.00. Messages From the Past: Hebrew Bullae from the Time of Isaiah through the Destruction of the First Temple, by Robert Deutsch. Tel Aviv: Archaeological Center Publications, 1999. Pp. 205. $80.00. These two volumes represent catalogues of the seals and bullae of one person's private collection. For this reason one might expect that the publication would be more of a vanity press collection rather than something of scholarly value. This is clearly not the case-the Moussaieff collection consists of 109 bullae (out of the 510 that have been published to date) and 203 seals. This is the largest collection of seals and bullae in the world. Assuming that these epigraphic items are authentic, the publication of this collection would rank next to N. Avigad and B. Sass's Corpus of West Semitic Stamp Seals (Jerusalem, 1997) as the most important and extensive of its kind. Unfortunately, the authenticity of all of the seals and bullae is in question. All of the items originate from illicit excavations or so-called chance finds and not from controlled excavations. One must thus entertain the possibility that some or even many of the items in this collection are forgeries (see discussion below). The two volumes are treated together in this review because they present one collection, but there are features of the two books that make them distinctive and different from each other. The volume of seals is written jointly by Robert Deutsch and Andrew Lemaire, and it consists almost entirely of a catalogue or listing of the inscriptions with little or no epigraphic commentary and bibliography. As most of the names from the seals have been treated previously and the discussion is included in the indexes, this method of listing is understandable. The photographic presentation of each seal in the corpus is excellent. In every case there is a color photograph of the seal, a black-and-white photograph of an impression from the seal, and a line drawing of the impression. In many cases there are color photographs of the side and top of the seal. The photographs and drawings are nothing short of lavish. In almost every instance the photographs of the impressions contain all the readable letters, and the color photographs allow the reader to have an idea of the character of the entire seal and not just the seal's impression. The line drawings are also accurate. Other information included in each entry includes a brief description of the seal, a classification of the seal material, measurements, a tentative dating, place where the seal was purchased, and a bibliography. Further discussion or analysis is not provided, and the onomastic notes and index at end of the volume are extremely brief. There is a notable absence of detailed indices and discussion that treat features such as iconography, word dividers, number of registers, orthography, decorative devices, and paleography. While this reviewer recognizes the value of simply listing the seal, brief indices and discussions of the topics mentioned above would have greatly enhanced the usefulness of the volume. The editors have rightly avoided assigning precise dates to the seals, yet in many cases even their general dates can be called into question since very few isolated seals contain letters that are diagnostically significant and conclusive for a particular period. For example, seal #31 contains letters that are more common in the late eighth century, but they are also found with much less frequency in seals and seal impressions from the late seventh century. Since there are no clearly diagnostic letters in this seal, it is really impossible to it precisely. It is clearly preexilic, but even the editors' date to be considered of ca. 700 B.C.E. is too precise. One of the real problems with seals of unknown provenance is that many of them cannot be dated precisely within even one hundred years (see A. …