cylinder seal
- Museum number
- 89182
- Description
-
Banded, white, pink and dark brown quartz , eyed agate cylinder seal. Two royal(?) figures, stride towards the right in “martial arm posture”; the head of one and headdress of the other are missing due to chips, but both were probably bearded; they wear plain mantles over plain kilts. In the field are a bird and a recumbent mountain goat, both with head turned back towards the left, and a rosette, originally miscut with eight rays, with six ending in dots. A five-line cuneiform inscription. Line above the inscription and extending slightly towards the right. Base-line below the scene.
- Dimensions
-
Diameter: 1.40 centimetres
-
Height: 3.10 centimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- Matthews (p. 87) attributes this seal to a variant of the Northern Tradition of the First Kassite style, notes that there is “possibly a half drape” of the “Open dress” (p. 71), and points out (p. 79) that this is the only seal of Northern type inscribed with a devotional inscription.
Inscription notes: The Akkadian is given verbatim on a seal in Copenhagen (Limet,8.11):
1 e-øe-ru åa dÅamaå
åu-zu-bu åa dmarûtuk
ki øa-a-ab pu-ú ù liåânu
ma-an-nu i-åa-na-an-ki
5 dnin-é-an-na
The use of lú for åa illustrates the dependence of Kassite-period scribes on lexical lists for their knowledge of Sumerian. There is of course a list that begins lú = åa. The second sign in line 3 is too long to be a perfect dùg, and since the first three lines of Brett 83 (Limet 8.13) otherwise agree perfectly with our first three save for GA in the place of dùg? , it is likely that an original ki dùg.ga ka eme underlies the two variants and our engraver, or the scribe behind him, modified the GA to something more like dùg. Bergamini (1987, p. 61 n. 70028) offers the same three lines with ki GA ka eme. Mouth-and-Tongue is apparently a kind of protecting angel rarely found in ritual texts, and here apparently subordinate to Nin-E’anna. See Oppenheim 1966.
- Location
- Not on display
- Condition
- Some faults in the stone; edges badly chipped, possibly due to the forcible removal of decorative metal (gold?) caps
- Acquisition date
- 1843
- Acquisition notes
- Purchased together with other antiquities (rest of 1843,1117 collection) from the executors of the late Sir Keith Jackson for £30.
- Department
- Middle East
- BM/Big number
- 89182
- Registration number
- 1843,1114.5
