- Museum number
- 130865
- Description
-
Violet or mauve chalcedony cylinder seal in the modelled style; antithetical group consisting of a winged disc, with divine torso and short streamers, above a kneeling Atlantid figure (hero?) facing left, flanked by supporting bull-men, a beardless worshipper before an altar on the left and a rampant lion-griffin on the right; helmets (?) and a cock in the upper field. The very top and bottom of the seal are missing. As a result, the head-dress and most of the head of god rising from the beaded circle of the winged disc are lacking, he faces left, is bearded and raises his left hand. The wings and tail are tripartite and they and the quadripartite streamers consist of many short, flaring feathers; there is also a group of short lines rising from the top of each wing, but because they are fragmentary, it is impossible to say whether these were beards of gods or an ornate appendage, though the angle would favour the latter. The Atlantid figure kneels on one knee, with hands raised and long fingers touching the ends of the streamers. He wears a beaded band above his brow and the undulations of his shoulder-length hair are indicated with short, close wheel-cuts, ending with rows of very fine drill-holes, and there are equally fine drill-holes over the cheek and chin; two more rows of fine wheel-cuts form the end of a band hanging down his back. His muscles and sinews are beautifully modelled and his whole body, from just above his biceps down to his ankles in the front and to mid-calf at the back, is covered with rows of small wheel-cuts, probably indicating hair some of which look almost like drill-holes. The long, thin toes of one foot are carefully cut. The bull-men were certainly carved by the same craftsman was the Atlantid figure and they have the same long fingers, musculature, hairy bodies down to mid-haunch and tassle down the back, but their hair is indicated by fine horizontal lines. Although both hands are raised, they only touch the wings of the winged disc with one hand. They have the legs and hanging tail of a bull but the bull-man on the right stands at a higher level; the tassles of the tails are carved with thicker wheels to produce constrasting fluffy effect. The worshipper looks youthful and stands straight; he has hair like that of the Atlantid figure, but without the beaded band; he wears a short-sleeved, long, fringed robe patterned with dot-filled hexagons, with a fringed shawl wrapped around the upper part, he extends his left hand palm uppermost and raises his clenched right hand with his long index finger extending towards the centre scene (note that the indication of the bone at the heel of his hand makes it clear that we are seeing his hand in a twisted perspective from the front and not, as we should, from the back); his feet are totally missing and he was evidently standing at a lower level than the other figures. Before him is an altar or table shaped like a bull's hind leg turned towards the right, but there are traces at the bottom of it, and probably to the right of the top, of some previous cutting in the form of very short, vertical wheel-cut lines. The ithyphallic lion-griffin has a lion's snarling head with wrinkled muzzle but a mule's long pointed ears and a lion's forepaws, one of which is raised to grasp the elbow of the right-hand bull-man, while the other is extended towards the small of his back; it has a bird's tail and talons on its hind legs, and its body, from the head to haunch, and the leading edges of its wings are covered with an even closer patterning of wheel-cuts than the bodies of the bull-man and Atlantid figure, in this case representing feathers. The figure has been carefully inserted between the bull-man and worshipper, but its avian hind-legs are unfinished and its talons are at a higher level than the feet of the other figures, overlapping the bull-man's tail and leg. Inserted in the upper field in front of the worshipper is a large cock with somewhat eagle-like eye and beak; its crest was removed when the seal was cut down, but its wattle is indicated by a cluster of drill-holes and its body-and-wing feathers are executed with rows of short wheel-cuts as for the winged disc, with the addition of arcs of diagonal and chevron lines for the tail; one foot could not be completed for lack of space. Above the right-hand bull-man, the lion-griffin and the worshipper are three irregular shapes, each with a vertical projection and 'handles' on either side, probably representing crested helmets although they might be water-pots and the cock could be a bringer of rain. The helmets or water-pots were probably not part of the original design but would suggest that this seal had metal (probably gold) caps; while these caps were being removed the ends of the seal became badly chipped and had to be ground down, thus obliterating the parts of the design closest to the top and bottom. Some of the chips extended beyond this, however and to mask them they were deepened (there are traces of the use of the drill in the lowest corners of each, linked by a cut line) to form the helmets or water-pots; this would explain their irregular positioning and angle and careless execution compared to the remainder of the design. The worshipper, cock and offering table may have been cut over an abraded area as the seal is flattened on this side and the tail of the left-hand bull-man has been recut but the same craftsman executed the whole design with the probably exception of the helmets / water-pots. Edges chipped; seal ends reground in antiquity and now convex; very straight and narrow perforation.
- Production date
- 700BC
- Dimensions
-
Length: 1.19 inches
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Width: 0.56 inches
- Curator's comments
- According to catalogue "This exceptionally beautifully-executed seal was probably made for a high official (either a young man or eunuch) who is depicted as a worshipper on it. His stance is Assyrian.... The composition is unusually crowded, to the extent where was insufficient room for some of the details. The undulating groundline, would have been even more marked when the worshipper's feet were present, recalls seals from Syria...The offering table before the worshipper is, as far as I know, unpararelled and does not seem very practical; it may be an abreviated table with one leg shown, though tables normally have lion's feet (unless they are cross-legged)...;the traces of recutting around the table do not make sense.... I would suggest that the present seal was made for a high-ranking Assyrian official by a Babylonian seal-cutter from a royal workshop, who was brought to Nimrud by Tiglath-pilesar III after the capture of Babylon in 729 or by Sargon II in 710 BC. The former date seems more likely because it was probably to the the influx of Babylonian royal seal-cutters that the Assyrians owed the renaissance of their own seal-cutting traditions. The seal would have been used, damaged and recut before ending up in destruction debris reused as fill."
- Location
- Not on display
- Condition
- Fair; edges chipped; reground in antiquity.
- Acquisition date
- 1951
- Acquisition notes
- 1950 Expedition.
- Department
- Middle East
- BM/Big number
- 130865
- Registration number
- 1951,0210.20
- Additional IDs
-
Excavation/small finds number: ND.305 (excavation number)
