cylinder seal
- Museum number
- 89126
- Title
- Object: Hash-hamer Cylinder
- Description
-
Greenstone cylinder seal; a goddess wearing a striped robe and a multiple-horned head-dress stands with both hands raised behind a worshipper (owner of seal - Hash-hamer?) in a fringed robe, bald and clean-shaven, who raises his right hand. He is being led by a second goddess in a flounced robe and multiple-horned who raises her left hand. They approach a deified king (possibly Ur-Nammu?) who is bearded, wears a plain robe with a double-rolled hem and a bracelet on his raised right wrist (he does not hold a cup). He is seated beneath the crescent moon on an elaborate throne with a curved back whose legs are shaped like a bull's, which stands on a two-step dais. A double-line border runs above the scene; inscription. The execution of the design is of very high quality. One of the seated figure's feet, the front foot of the chair and the central part of the dais, have been erased, perhaps to mask a shallow chip.
- Production date
- 2100BC (about)
- Dimensions
-
Diameter: 3.03 centimetres (max?)
-
Diameter: 2.87 centimetres (min?)
-
Height: 5.30 centimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Bibliographic references
-
Collon 1982a / Catalogue of the Western Asiatic Seals in the British Museum: Cylinder Seals II: Akkadian, Post Akkadian, Ur III Periods (469, pl. LII)
-
Aruz & Wallenfels 2003a / Art of the First Cities: The Third Millennium B.C. from the Mediterranean to the Indus (no. 319, pp. 447-48)
-
Ker Porter R 1821/22a / Travels in Georgia, Persia, Armenia, ancient Babylonia etc etc during the years 1817, 1818, 1819, and 1820 (vol. 2, p.422, pl. LXXIX, no. 6)
-
Guide 1884a / A Guide to the Exhibition Galleries of the British Museum, Bloomsbury (p. xxxvi)
-
Zervos C 1935a / L'art de la Mesopotamie (p.253)
-
Barnett & Wiseman 1960a / Fifty masterpieces of Ancient Near Eastern Art (p.87, no.41)
-
Strommenger E & Hirmer M 1962a / Funf Jahrtausende Mesopotamien (pl.128)
-
Gadd, CT 36 / Cuneiform Texts from Babylonian Tablets in the British Museum (6)
-
Frayne, RIME 3/2 / Ur III Period (2112-2004 BC) (RIM.E.3/2.1.1.2001)
- Location
- On display (G56/dc10)
- Exhibition history
-
Exhibited:
2003 5 May-17 Aug, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 'Art of the First Cities'
1991 9 Mar-7 May, Japan, Osaka, National Museum of Art, Treasures of the British Museum, cat. no.29
1991 5 Jan-20 Feb, Japan, Yamaguchi, Prefectural Museum of Art, Treasures of the British Museum, cat. no.29
1990 20 Oct-9 Dec, Japan, Tokyo, Setagaya Art Museum, Treasures of the British Museum, cat. no.29
Room of Writing (in 1960)
- Condition
- Fair
- Acquisition date
- 1880
- Acquisition notes
- The piece was donated by Cobham through C.T.Newton, CB; the piece was obtained at Babylon before 1840 by W. John Hine and handed at his death in 1860 to Cobham. Its acquisition by the Museum was specifically described in the1884 'Guide to the Exhibition Galleries of the British Museum, Bloomsbury' (London, p. xxxvi) as "A large green jasper Cylinder, inscribed with the name of the Chaldean monarch Amil-Hea, who reigned about B.C. 2000"
- Department
- Middle East
- BM/Big number
- 89126
- Registration number
- 1880,1009.1
