The Babylonian World - Historia Antigua

— Babylonian seals —
mostly corroded in the saline environment of Babylonia or been melted down for
reuse. An interesting series of impressions on almost 200 very small lumps of clay
were found in a coffin at Ur, in southern Iraq, possibly that of a jeweller (Figure
7.36). They illustrate motifs from Assyrian, Babylonian, Achaemenid and Greek seals
and from Greek coins, and range in date from the eighth to the fourth century BC
(Legrain 1951, Nos. 701–841; Porada 1960; Collon 1996).
The site of Uruk is the main source of published sealed documents for southern
Babylonia in the Hellenistic period (from 330 BC), both cuneiform tablets and bullae
(Wallenfels 1994, 1996; Lindström 2003). Seal-ring impressions are in the majority,
many with zodiacal signs, but there are impressions of some fine circular official
portrait seals based on coin-types. However, at the Seleucid capital of Seleucia-onthe-Tigris,
where a public archive building was excavated, the texts had been written
on perishable materials and all that remains are some 25,000 sealed bullae (Invernizzi
1996), mostly with impressed with Greek seals, but some still bearing Babylonian
motifs (Invernizzi 1994).
NOTES
1 In this chapter I have used the Middle Chronology, according to which Hammurabi of Babylon
reigned from 1792 to 1750 BC. A Low Chronology is advocated later in the chapter, but any
change in chronology has to take into account the varying dating schemes of the whole Eastern
Mediterranean, the Near East and beyond. It is to be hoped that dendrochronology and icecore
dating may soon produce the absolute dates that will settle the problem of High, Middle
or Low.
2 In the figure captions the dimensions of the seals are given in centimetres, height × diameter,
or height × length × width. Unless otherwise stated the seals are cylinder seals in the British
Museum, the photographs are reproduced courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum and
the designs are from modern impressions.
3 The materials of the British Museum’s collection of Near Eastern cylinder seals and Sasanian
stamp seals, covering over 4,000 years, have been subjected to analysis using the same methods
and nomenclature, thus providing a unique tool for a study of the development of techniques
for cutting increasingly hard materials.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Al-Gailani Werr, L. 1980: ‘Chronological table of Old Babylonian seal impressions’, Bulletin of the
Institute of Archaeology 17: 33–84.
–––– 1981: ‘Seals from Sippar, Part I’, Sumer 37: 129–41.
–––– 1988: Studies in the Chronology and Regional Style of Old Babylonian Cylinder Seals (Bibliotheca
Mesopotamica 23), Malibu (Undena Publications).
–––– and Al-Jadir, W. n.d.: ‘Seals from Sippar, Part II’, Researches on the Antiquities of Saddam Dam
Basin Salvage and other Researches (State Organisation of Antiquities and Heritage), Baghdad,
pp. 163–70.
Blocher, F. 1992a: Siegelabrollungen auf frühaltbabylonischen Tontafeln in der Yale Babylonian Collection
(Münchener Vorderasiatische Studien 9), Munich.
–––– 1992b: Siegelabrollungen auf frühaltbabylonischen Tontafeln im British Museum (Münchener
Vorderasiatische Studien 10), Munich.
Braun-Holzinger, E. A. 1996: ‘Altbabylonische Götter und ihre Symbole’, Baghdader Mitteilungen
27: 235–359.
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