cylinder seal
- Museum number
- 89762
- Description
-
Steel-grey hematite cylinder seal. A naked goddess with ample thighs (cf. CLS 9 BM 89848), shown frontally with arms bent and hands below her breasts, with her head and feet turned towards the left, has her hair in an elaborate chignon, wears boots with upturned toes and has undulating triple-streams flowing from her shoulders. She faces a bearded worshipper who wears a royal cap with upturned brim and perhaps a strap across the top of the head, and is wrapped in a garment, with pairs of diagonal lines from which hang fringes. Between them are a six-pointed star and a pyxis. A secondary motif consists of a frontal, naked, bearded hero whose feet, on a faint base-line, are turned towards the left, and who grasps the two undulating triple-streams that flow from his shoulders. Above him is a two-strand seven-coil Z-guilloche with a line below it, and below him is a two-strand five-coil Z-guilloche, both with faint marks within the coils. Line borders top and bottom.
- Dimensions
-
Length: 1.88 centimetres
-
Width: 0.84 centimetres
- Curator's comments
- The diameter of the seal at the bottom is irregular and the seal has been flattened. Van Buren (1933, p. 135) was evidently working from a poor photograph when she described this seal as depicting three goddesses. It is interesting that there are two deities with flowing vases on this seal, with the male figure considerably smaller than the female. The former short hair, eyes somewhat similar to those of the naked hero on CLS 3 (BM 116155) but allowing space for other facial features, and two vertical lines on either side of his probably represent his ears. Note his arm posture which resembles that of the goddesses on CLS 7 (BM 129585) and CLS 7a (BM 89848). For the king’s wrap-around, fringed garment, with the fringes also depicted as pendent triangles, see Teissier 1995, no. 84) where the figure wearing it adopts the same posture and also faces the naked goddess, and CLS 44 (BM 134854) where the fringes are horizontal and indicted by short lines, and this rare type of garment is worn by what seems to be a minor royal figure.
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition notes
- Obtained by Layard in “Assyrian Ruins
- Department
- Middle East
- BM/Big number
- 89762
- Registration number
- N.2056
