Eastern Seals Research Articles

Ахеменидская цилиндрическая печать из Косики

This article is devoted to the Achaemenid cylinder seal, representing a fight of the Persian hero with two lions, from the princely burial in Kosika in the Lower Volga region dated to the third quarter of the 1st century BC. The analysis has shown that the seal is dated to the 5th century BC, more likely to its first half. There is a good chance that it could be carved in a peripheral workshop in Mesopotamia or in Syria. The seal, made of a high quality-material at the high level, represents a complicated and in certain aspects very rare composition, clearly standing out in the context of the Achaemenid glyptics. At least 400 years passed between the time the seal had been carved and its use as part of the burial inventory in Kosika. It is hardly to suggest that the seal belonged to nomads all this time, especially since the finds of the Achaemenid seals in the nomadic burials in Eurasia of the 5th–4th centuries BC are extremely rare, unlike their finds in the necropoleis of the Bosporan Kingdom. The Achaemenid seal from Kosika along with a Kassite cylinder seal found in the same burial belongs to the circle of the Western Asian and Near Eastern seals of the mid-2nd — mid-1st millennium BC which were found also in the burials of Sarmatian elite of the 1st century BC — early 2nd century AD in the Bug, the Don and the Kuban regions. They probably fell into the hands of the nomads during robbery of sanctuaries at Transcaucasia.

A scaraboid from burial 1 of burial-mound 1/2015 of the Chebotarev V cemetery in the Lower Don area (about the Near Eastern seals in the nomadic burials of the Middle Sarmatian period)

A scaraboid from burial 1 of burial-mound 1/2015 of the Chebotarev V cemetery in the Lower Don area (about the Near Eastern seals in the nomadic burials of the Middle Sarmatian period)

Ancient Near Eastern Seals - Enduring Envoys

Ancient Near Eastern Seals - Enduring Envoys

Ancient Near Eastern Seals from the Kist Collection: Three Millennia of Miniature Reliefs

Not only their function in Ancient Near Eastern daily life makes stamp and cylinder seals an important subject of study, but also their outstanding aesthetic beauty. The examples of stamp and cylinder seals catalogued and described in the present volume are part of the collection of Ancient Near Eastern glyptic art acquired by the Kist family during the last century. The collection consists of hundreds of seals ranging from the fourth millennium Uruk and Jemdet Nasr periods up to the Achaemenid period of the first millennium B.C. The majority of the artifacts are published here for the first time, making the volume into a unique and essential resource for Ancient Near Eastern scholars and art historians.

"Infinite Riches in a Little Room": The Music Collections in the Pierpont Morgan Library. Part 1

When, in early 1972, I first walked through the wrought-iron gates and passed the rugged bronze doors that secure the East 36th Street entrance to the Morgan Library Annex, I was overwhelmed. A first visit to this august institution can disconcert the unprepared, even discourage the timid from venturing through that portal. And while I am still, a quarter-century later, awed by the capacious East Room with its tiered bookcases, walk-in fireplace, and expansive tapestry (the subject of which is, yes, the triumph of avarice), and am no longer intimidated by the North Room - the smaller but still imposing version of the East Room in which I timorously endured a job interview - I like to think of the library not as the dragon Fafner and readers as needing Siegfried's guileless bravado to win access to its treasures but as a welcoming institution that, with obligatory strictures, makes them available to those who need to see them.(1) I make this point at the outset since there may still be some who regard this library-museum - admittedly an unusual combination - as elitist, its staff aloof, its vaults sacrosanct. It is a private and a personal place, John Russell has written, though one to which we all of us can ask access.(2) And access is usually granted. Use of the collection is open to qualified scholars, musicians, and graduate students, who will first be asked to use copies such as microfilms and facsimiles; if a reader can demonstrate a need to consult the original, it will be made available. All prospective readers are asked to write or call before visiting; new readers will be asked to provide a letter of introduction and photo identification. The library's reading room is open from 9:30 a.m. to 4:45 p.m., Monday through Friday, but is closed major holidays and (usually) for the last two weeks in August.(3) This article is laid out as follows: an overview of the major collections; some words about Mr. Morgan's purchases; a detailed account of the offered to Mary Flagler Cary; and surveys of other collections in the library. At the end is a list of the persons whose and letters the library houses. While the emphasis throughout the article is on the manuscripts, noteworthy letters and printed material are mentioned in passing. Mrs. Cary will be the central figure for the simple reason that her collecting is the most thoroughly documented. Most of the purchases made by the Morgans are also recorded, but they did not buy much music; for reasons given below, Dannie and Hettie Heineman's collecting is sometimes difficult to track; and whatever accounts Robin Lehman has kept of his purchases are his own, as is his collection. AN OVERVIEW The collections for which the library has been known for much of this century - early printed books, fine bindings, master drawings, ancient Near Eastern seals and tablets, and illuminated, literary, and historical - were begun by its founder, J. Pierpont Morgan (18371913) and carried on by his son, J.P. Morgan Jr. (1867-1943), known as Jack. Absent from these so-called paper collections (which, in addition to the stone seals, include works on vellum and parchment) are, with a few noteworthy exceptions, and letters. As used here, the term music manuscripts refers to the handwritten from the eighteenth to twentieth centuries that is housed in the Department of Music Manuscripts and Books. The library does own earlier manuscripts, mostly liturgical, that contain - graduals, antiphonaries, and psalters, for example - and other significant documents, such as Las siete canciones de amor by Martin Codax (fl. ca. 1230) and a manuscript of fourteenth-century English polyphonic music. These and other early manuscripts, which are not discussed in this article, are housed in the Department of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts, to which inquiries about them should be addressed. …

Distinguishing between Different Populations of Harp Seal (Phoca groenlandica) by Chemometry of the Fatty Acid Profiles in the Jaw Bone

The relative amounts of various fatty acids of jawbone and eye lens were determined in harp seals (Phoca groenlandica) caught in the Greenland Sea and in the Barents Sea. The two tissues had distinctly different profiles. The fatty acid profile in the lens tissue changed with age. Principal component analysis of the data showed that the profiles in the jawbone were different in seals from the two populations, while the difference was much less prominent in the case of the eye lens. Using the jawbone profiles from the western and eastern seals as reference, it was shown that seven seals, caught in west coast seine nets during the large invasion of harp seals along the Norwegian coast in the winter of 1986–87, had come from the eastern population.

Near Eastern Seals

A rich source of pictorial information about the Ancient Near East comes to us in the form of miniature reliefs, created from the impressions made in clay by tiny engraved stone seals. Originally used for sealing goods and writing tablets, these seals now provide important evidence for administrative practices, technical development, and long-distance trade. The designs themselves record religious beliefs, mythical characters, architectural styles, musical instruments, festivals, sport, warfare, transportation, and fashions in dress. In this first comprehensive introduction to pre-Islamic Near Eastern seals, Dominique Collon discusses cylinder sealsa form unique to the Ancient Near Eastas well as stamp seals, the earliest dating from the fifth millennium B.C. As a reflection of how their owners saw the world around them, Near Eastern seals are an essential tool for archaeologists in interpreting the past.

Early near Eastern Seals in the Yale Babylonian Collection. Briggs Buchanan

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsEarly near Eastern Seals in the Yale Babylonian Collection. Briggs Buchanan Richard L. ZettlerRichard L. Zettler Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Journal of Near Eastern Studies Volume 46, Number 1Jan., 1987 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/373218 Views: 1Total views on this site Copyright 1987 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Trees, snakes and gods in ancient Syria and Anatolia

For too long study of ancient Near Eastern representational art and study of possibly related texts have been entirely separate disciplines, the one a branch of archaeology, the other of philology. This accounts for the very scanty results obtained and their frequently questionable character. In the case of Classical Greece and Rome art historians ordinarily command Greek and Latin so as to use written sources at first hand, but Near Eastern archaeologists have commonly been illiterate in their fields of study, while philologists often have limited knowledge of art and use that very amateurishly. Thus it is an occasion for rejoicing that a serious attempt has just been made on some very difficult material from Syria and Anatolia, and that one major break-through has resulted which opens up prospects of fuller understanding of certain aspects of ancient art. The author, E. Williams-Forte, is primarily an art historian with a speciality in ancient Near Eastern seals, and she has taken an interest in Ugaritic to be able to exploit that material. Her Columbia Ph.D. thesis: Mythic cycles: the iconography of the gods of water and weather in Syria and Anatolia during the Middle Bronze Age (ca. 2000–1600 B.C.) has not been published, but a lengthy article derived from parts of it has recently appeared. This starts from the tree and snake in the garden of Eden and investigates their possible Canaanite background. The original observation of major importance is that the storm god of Syria and Anatolia of the first half of the second millennium B.C., Anatolian Tarhunna, Syrian Hadad or Baal, Mesopotamian Adad, occasionally holds up a plant, branch or tree as a symbol.

Briggs W. Buchanan and Ulla Kasten. Early Near Eastern Seals in the Yale Babylonian Collection.

Previous articleNext article No AccessCritical ReviewsBriggs W. Buchanan and Ulla Kasten. Early Near Eastern Seals in the Yale Babylonian Collection.W. G. LambertW. G. Lambert Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Journal of Cuneiform Studies Volume 36, Number 1Spring 1984 A journal of ASOR Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.2307/1360019 Views: 1Total views on this site Copyright 1984 American Schools of Oriental ResearchPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Early near Eastern Seals in the Yale Babylonian Collection

Early near Eastern Seals in the Yale Babylonian Collection

Near Eastern Seals in the Gulbenkian Museum of Oriental Art, University of Durham

The Near Eastern seal collection of the Gulbenkian Museum of Oriental Art, University of Durham, had a single immediate origin. It was part of the collection of antiquities belonging to the Dukes of Northumberland, formerly housed in Alnwick Castle. Most of the Egyptian antiquities were acquired by the 4th Duke during the first half of the 19th century, and in 1880, at the expense of the 6th Duke, a printed catalogue of the whole collection as it then existed was issued, compiled by Samuel Birch, Keeper of Egyptian, Assyrian and Oriental Antiquities in the British Museum. This describes four Near Eastern cylinder seals, nos. 2016–2018 and 2020, a very modest start. The greater number of these was collected after this time by the eldest son of the 7th Duke, who first came to public attention as Lord Warkworth, but was later styled Henry Algernon George, Earl Percy. He was born in 1871, travelled extensively in the Near East in 1895, 1897 and 1899, and died prematurely in 1909. As noted in the Dictionary of National Biography, Supplement 1901–1911, 904, “true to the traditions of his family, he began to collect antiques, particularly cylinder seals”, and significantly an Akkadian cylinder seal design adorns the front board of his book Notes from a Diary in Asiatic Turkey (London, 1898). This material joined the family collection, and it appears that he was the last of his line to pursue this interest, so that nothing was added after 1910. The collection remained in Alnwick Castle until the 9th Duke deposited it on loan in the British Museum in 1939. The easier access which this move was intended to create was, however, prevented by the outbreak of war. In 1950, when conditions had returned to normal after the war, thanks to the generosity of the present Duke and the initiative of Professor T. W. Thacker of the University of Durham, the whole Northumberland collection, with a few exceptions, was acquired for that University, where it is now housed in the Gulbenkian Museum of Oriental Art, close to its ancestral home.

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

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.

Ancient near Eastern Seals at Charterhouse

Ancient near Eastern Seals at Charterhouse

Catalogue of Ancient Near Eastern Seals in the Ashmolean Museum, Vol. I. Cylinder Seals. By Briggs Buchanan.

<i>Catalogue of Ancient Near Eastern Seals in the Ashmolean Museum, Vol. I. Cylinder Seals</i>. By Briggs Buchanan.

Catalogue of Ancient near Eastern Seals in the Ashmolean Museum. Vol. I. Cylinder Seals. Briggs Buchanan

<i>Catalogue of Ancient near Eastern Seals in the Ashmolean Museum. Vol. I. Cylinder Seals</i>. Briggs Buchanan

Ancient near Eastern Seals in Birmingham Collections

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.

Ancient near Eastern Seals in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

THis catalogue of ancient Near Eastern seals is published and the photographs are reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. The term ancient Near East is here used to cover the period from the prehistoric age until the end of the Achaemenid Empire. The majority of the seals in the Collection are Mesopotamian in origin but Achaemenid art is well represented and there are a few examples of Syrian, Anatolian and Phoenician glyptic; Egyptian seals have not been included. None of the seals was obtained through excavation and in only a few cases is it known where they were acquired. In consequence their classification has had to be based entirely on stylistic grounds. No attempt has been made in this article to give a general history of the development of Near Eastern glyptic art since this has been treated in a number of publications, notably H. Frankfort, Cylinder Seals, A. Moortgat, T7orderasiatische Rollsiegel, E. Porada, Corpus of Ancient Near Eastern Seals in North American Collections, vol. I, H. H. von der Osten, Altorientalische Siegelsteine der Sammlung Hans Si/bins von Auloch (Studia Ethnographica Upsaliensis, vol. XIII). The seals have been classified according to form into three groups: 1, cylinder seals; II, seal-amulets; III, stamp seals. Groups I and III have been subdivided according to region, but so far as possible a chronological arrangement has been followed in order to give a continuous presentation of the development of glyptic art. The measurements of the seals are given in millimetres; for cylinders, height followed by diameter of the end; for seal-amulets, length of the seal surface; for stamp seals, height, and length and width of the seal surface in that order. Except where stated on the Plates (V-XI) the photographs reproduce the seals at their actual size.

SEALS FROM KULTEPE

The seals and seal imprcssions which were discovcrcd in thc Karum of Kanesh at Kültcpc from 1948 through 1951 wcre pub- lished by thc writer as prcliminary rcports of the excavationsx. In 1953 w e bcgan to excavate on the city-mound and brought to light seals from that area also1 2. In the prcscnt articlc, wc shall discuss the seals and imprcssions from both areas. The material treated falls into the following classification : 1 Belleten 65, pp. 123; 66 pp. 303; 85 pp. 13; Tahsin und Nimet Özgüç, Ausgrabungen in Kültepe, Bericht über die im Auftrage der Türkischen Histori- sehen Gesellschaft, 1949 durchgeführten Ausgrabungen. Ankara 1953, pp. 226. 2 Belleten 77, pp. 33; 81 pp. 61; 82 p. 345. 3 K. Balkan, Letter of king Anum-hirbi of Mama to king VVarshama of Ka- nish. Ankara 1957 Fig. 12, p. 2. 4 Ibid, Fig. 12. P. 2 6 Edith Porada, Corpus of Ancient Near Eastern Seals in North American Collections. The Picrpont Morgan library collaction Pl. XL, XLI. A. Seals and bullae of Kanesh (city-mound). B. Seals and seal-impressions from the Karum of Kanesh Level Ib. C. Seals from level II of the Karum. I) . The seal-impression from level III of the Karum. A. The seals and bullae of Kanesh (city-mound) arc represented by one cylinder seal, three stamp seals, and two bullae.

The Collection of the Pierpont Morgan Library: Corpus of Ancient Near Eastern Seals in North American Collections, Vol. I. Edith Porada

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsThe Collection of the Pierpont Morgan Library: Corpus of Ancient Near Eastern Seals in North American Collections, Vol. I. Edith Porada Helene J. KantorHelene J. Kantor Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Journal of Near Eastern Studies Volume 11, Number 2Apr., 1952 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/371079 Views: 2Total views on this site PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.