Excavations at Nimrud, 1949-1953: Seals and Seal Impressions
1955; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 17; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/4241722
ISSN2053-4744
Autores Tópico(s)Archaeology and Historical Studies
ResumoThis article is concerned with the seals and seal impressions on clay labels and business documents discovered at Nimrud during the five seasons of excavations conducted by the British School of Archaeology in Iraq, from 1949-1953. The seals, and particularly the impressions of seals on dated tablets, and a few bullae provide a valuable addition to our knowledge of the development of Assyrian seal engraving. One of the aims of this study is, of course, to obtain as close a dating as possible for the different types. For this we have previously been dependent on the few seals in public and private collections, dated by inscription; on the seals and impressions from the excavations at Assur, dating mostly to the thirteenth century B.C., and to the ninth-eighth centuries B.C.; on the few seals found at Khorsabad, presumably not later than the reign of Sargon; and on the impressions upon clay sealings found by Layard in Sennacherib's palace at Quyunjik, (a few of these Layard illustrated and others he described).The new material leaves inevitably a number of gaps and problems; one of the principal gaps seems to be the lack of evidence for seals made at the time of Tiglath-pileser III; for example, we do not know whether the delicate engraving of seals such as ND.305 (Pl. XI, 1) was practised in his reign. The stone reliefs from Nimrud of Tiglath-pileser III are evidence of a distinctive development in design, and a comparable development in the art of seal engraving might be expected.
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