cylinder seal
- Museum number
- 123284
- Description
-
Black magnetite cylinder seals. In the centre is a royal figure with the tall oval headdress and mantle with heavy rolled borders of a Syrian king, but from the front of his headdress rises an animal head, perhaps meant for a uraeus. He is flanked by two figures wearing Atef crowns and pleated kilts with a projecting point, and both figures are in the posture of the dance, standing on one foot with the other leg bent and foot raised behind, forming a cross with the standing leg; in the hand furthest from the viewer they hold the stem of a papyrus plant, and in the other they hold the loop of an object. On the right is an Egyptian goddess with a uraeus rising from her forehead, wearing a garment tied with a triple belt at the waist and having a fringed border at the bottom. Four large drillings and two crossing lines placed at random in the design may have been added by a later seal owner. Line borders top and bottom.
- Dimensions
-
Diameter: 10 millimetres
-
Height: 23 millimetres
- Curator's comments
- The elongation of the perforation suggests that the seal was worn horizontally. Teissier (p. 61, no. 63) has not recognised the figures wearing Atef-crowns as holding hieroglyphs. The latter resemble the hieroglyphs for sa or, more probably, åen, both of which have an apotropaic value (Teissier 1995, p. 107). The posture of these two figures is an Egyptian dancing posture, and is the one most commonly attested on cylinder seals from the Old Babylonian period onwards (e.g. on two Old Assyrian seals: Porada 1948, nos 555 and 556). The dots and cross may have been added to the seal in alter to invalidate and “cancel” it (see also CLS 21 (BM 89358).
- Location
- Not on display
- Condition
- Very slightly chipped
- Acquisition date
- 1933
- Department
- Middle East
- BM/Big number
- 123284
- Registration number
- 1933,0408.6
