In my last article, I provided a historical overview of the Neo-Assyrian, Urartian, and Achaemenid empires, highlighting the ways they related to each over time, in diplomacy, and through cultural exchange. I also introduced three prominent symbols frequently found in cylinder seal iconography: the crescent moon, fish, and winged disk. This second article will delve deeper into these symbols by presenting three examples of cylinder seals that feature them.

A Neo-Assyrian seal from Babylon

On the 26th of March 1824, the Honourable George Keppel and his entourage visited the ruins of Babylon in what was then the Arab periphery of the Ottoman Empire (today’s Iraq). Keppel was a British soldier who fought in the Battle of Waterloo (1815) against Napoleon’s forces, and, characteristic for the period, later took to a life of politics, travel, and writing. In his 1827 travelogue, Keppel (1827: 110) wrote that he and his companions “brought with us from Babylon several curious cylinders, of which, numbers are found amoungst the ruins. I have presented three to the British Museum … as they are of such high antiquity”. This section focuses on the first of these seals.

At nearly 3cm in height, this seal is the largest of the three donated by Keppel. It is made from chalcedony, a kind of quartz, and is in good condition except for some chipping around the edges. Keppel, relatively familiar with Mesopotamian symbolism, offered some preliminary analysis of the seal’s iconography; he noted that the seal depicts:

Two persons seated before an altar, each holding a small fish. One of them is a man with a beard; the other is a woman. Behind this last is another female, who is holding over her head what appears to be a palm branch—a most ancient mark of royalty. In nearly all the Persepolitan [Persian] sculptures, the king, or chief, is similarly attended. On the altar is a fish, and above it are a star and a crescent, which would favour the opinion, that the cylinders, as well as the bricks, have some reference to astronomy. The bearded personage in this amulet, I consider to be a priest and the female a princess, who is offering sacrifice to the large fish on the altar … The stars and the half-moon may denote the precise period in which this sacrifice was performed (Keppel 1827: 110-112).

Keppel’s interpretation of the seal iconography differed in a few ways from the analysis performed nearly two centuries later by the British Museum’s curators of the Near East department. First, the two figures identified by Keppel as women are actually thought to be young men, considering the similarity of their clothing and hair styles to the bearded figure and the fact that one is carrying a sword. The British Museum curators write, in fact, that the seal likely belonged to the bearded man, while the young man sitting opposite him could be his wealthy master (as evidenced by the attendant) (The British Museum).

Further, the two seated figures are believed to be holding cups rather than fish; this may have been a significant creative decision, as similar scenes with a seated male holding an object in one hand have been interpreted as a reference to a high political position, possibly even that of a king (Mazar 1992). The figures’ stance with chest thrust forward is characteristic of Babylonian images, while the scene itself (of a banquet) was popular in ancient southeastern Anatolia and across the Levant (Collon 2001: 149).

The winged disk, on the other hand, is unusual for Babylonian seals. Also, the winged disk on this seal, squished as it is between two figures, appears to have been added after the rest of the design had been carved. This could indicate that its owner (either the original owner or someone who acquired the seal later) “wished to indicate his Assyrian allegiance” (The British Museum). As we will see, this is not the only instance of foreign iconography used to indicate allegiance or affiliation to Assyria. The Assyrian empire had an extensive reach and a rich, prominent artistic tradition, which ensured longevity for many important cultural symbols.

An Urartian seal at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

The second piece is an Urartian loop-handled seal with engravings on both the face and base, allowing its owner to either roll or stamp their ‘signature’. The seal is currently at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (‘the Met’). Curators have dated the seal to the 8th-7th century BCE and determined it to be made of either limestone or calcite (Pitman and Aruz 1987: 78). Characteristic of the Met, there is no provenance for the object before 1977 and no information available on findspot or provenience. As a result, analysis is limited by the fact that the only geographic and historic information we have is that the seal is thought to be Urartian.

3.7 cm tall and 1.7 cm in diameter, this second cylinder seal is considerably larger than the first. The length of the seal accommodates a pierced ‘handle’ on one end, which would have allowed its owner to suspend the seal on a string or pin and provide a grip to ensure a clear and legible stamp.

Rather than a feast or ceremony, which were somewhat more popular scenes, the Urartian seal depicts a hunting party where “a mounted hunter with a spear and a standing archer attack a rampant lion over a dead caprid; the lion attacks a third man kneeling behind a tall shield and armed with arrows and a spear.” Other imagery includes, on the base, “a winged lion with bovine horn and hooves and a scorpion tail” and “in the sky, a crescent” (Pitman and Aruz 1987: 78).

On Urartian seals, hunting parties were the most common scene to include a crescent moon, which—recalling that the crescent may invoke either a sun or mood god—could have afforded the seal a talismanic function (Dusinberre 2005: 52-53). The artistic style of the imagery has clearly been influenced by exposure to the Assyrian canon, which may have been a strategic decision to appeal to a new market. Chahin (2001: 146), for instance, points out that “considering Assyria’s immense importance as an extensive market for all classes of goods, it would have been commercial suicide for Urartu if its craftsmen had not, as sensible businessmen, offered their nearest and biggest customer, Assyria, just the styles that would best stimulate trade—styles to conform with Assyrian taste.”

Urartian artisans also made several significant contributions of their own to the regional canon of visual media. In fact, archaeologist Leonard Woolley (1961a, quoted in Chahin 2001: 148) wrote that “the most original and the most fruitful contribution to art was made by the metal-workers of Urartu.” Following the sack of the Urartian city of Musasir in 714 BCE, the occupying Assyrians were both shocked and impressed by the quantity and quality of fine goods found in the city (numbering in the hundreds of thousands) (Chahin 2001: 148). For centuries, Assyria and Urartu were engaged in a reciprocal, synergetic process of cultural exchange. Both adopted certain imagery associated with the other for commercial purposes, to be able to offer products with familiar imagery to a foreign market (Woolley 1961b: 173). Both were influential empires that achieved the status of regional power and, by attempting to understand the level of exchange between them (sometimes as rivals, sometimes as partners), we can hope to shed light on the evolution of their rich artistic traditions.

An Achaemenid (“Late Phrygian”) seal from Gordion

From 1950 until 1973, Rodney S. Young of the University of Pennsylvania Museum excavated at Gordion, the former capital of the Phrygian Empire and a major cultural and political centre in the ancient period. Phrygia was an Iron Age kingdom in central-west Anatolia which, following its decline, became a province of the Achaemenid Empire under Cyrus the Great (around the 540s BCE). During Young’s tenure at Gordion, discoveries of cylinder seals from the Middle Phrygian and Achaemenid periods were so frequent that it’s believed Gordion at the time was host to a thriving seal manufacturing industry (Penn Museum 2018a, 2018b). These seals also included a diverse set of symbols and iconography, including scarabs, schematic lines, and winged disks, that indicate connections with other empires across the Near East, central Asia, and Egypt.

The last seal to be presented in this article was discovered during Young’s third season, when he was excavating on the citadel mound; you can see the seal impression as Figure 10 in this excavation report. His work was focused on identifying the function of the ‘Mosaic Building’ and the discovery of the seal may have been a lucky break:

What that function [of the Mosaic Building] was we cannot be certain, though the finding of a beautifully and precisely carved cylinder seal of carnelian in the pillaged debris of its foundations may be significant. … Thus it seems quite possible that the Mosaic Building may have been the official residence of the representative of the Great King at Gordion (Young 1955: 14).

The seal is a red-orange agate cylinder about 2.4 cm long, pierced to be worn as a pendant or talisman. The scene features two figures atop sphinxes, flanking a figure in a winged disk hovering above an altar or table. Beside the three figures (who are all dressed in Persian robes) is an Aramaic inscription that identifies the owner of the seal. Around the outside of the composition is a bud-and-lotus pattern, typical of the region and period. Objects found near the seal by Young’s team imply a manufacturing date in the 5th century BCE. This would match the imagery, which reflects motifs and symbology of the Achaemenid tradition. Although we can recognise evidence of Assyrian influence, for example the winged disk, “the figure in the winged disk is a very common figure in Achaemenid worship scenes. The appearance of the figure in the context of Gordion is especially interesting-particularly on this seal with heartland Persian imagery, the lingua franca Aramaic inscription, and an Anatolian style.” Further, the style of carving has been described “as Graeco-Persian, with deep rounded volumes [and] transitions between volumes often indicated by lines rather than modelling” (Dusinberre 2005: 53-54).

Evidently, Gordion was at the nexus of many empires and artistic traditions, which were reflected in the iconography of cylinder seals produced in the city. The inclusion of the winged disk on the seal may be characterised as “a self-consciously extra overt assertion of affiliation” with Neo-Assyria but it is also recognised as a well-known icon of the Egyptian, Near Eastern, and even Anatolian artistic traditions. In each it tends to represent religious devotion or worship, with the implication that reverence of “the gods, and worship of the gods, leads to a fertile existence” (Dusinberre 2005: 53-54).

This article has introduced three seals that feature iconography often shared by the various empires and kingdoms of the Iron Age Near East. The first, unearthed by a Grand Tour traveller in 19th-century Iraq, offers an idea of the extent of Neo-Assyrian cultural influence across the Iron Age Near East. The second, of Urartian manufacture and currently in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, showcases a lion hunting party and its possible interpretations. In my next article, the final part of this series, these will be examined in a comparative analysis with the third seal, excavated at the ancient site of Gordion, to highlight the interaction of artistic traditions from Neo-Assyria, Persia, and Anatolia. Through these case studies, we can investigate the contextual significance and cultural implications of these symbols within their respective empires, shedding light on their enduring legacy and influence.

Notes

1 Chahin, M. 2001. The Kingdom of Armenia: A History. East Sussex: Psychology Press.
2 Collon, D. 2001. Catalogue of the Western Asiatic Seals in the British Museum: Cylinder Seals V: Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian Periods. London: BMP.
3 Dusinberre, E. 2005. Gordion Seals and Sealings: Individuals and Society. Gordion Special Series III. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.
4 Keppel, G. 1827. Personal Narrative of a Journey from India to England, by Bussorah, Bagdad, the Ruins of Babylon, Curdistan, the Court of Persia, the Western Shore of the Caspian Sea, Astrakhan, Nishney Novogorod, Moscow, and St Petersburgh in the Year 1824. Philadelphia: Carey, Lea & Carey.
5 Mazar, A. 1992. Archaeology of the Land of the Bible 10,000 - 586 BCE. New Haven: Yale University Press.
6 Penn Museum. 2018a. “Seals at Gordion.” Philadelphia: The University of Pennsylvania Museum.
7 Penn Museum. 2018b. “The Gordion Archaeological Project.” Philadelphia: The University of Pennsylvania Museum.
8 Pitman, H. and J. Aruz. 1987. Ancient Art in Miniature: Eastern Seals from the Collection of Martin and Sarah Cherkasky. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
9 The British Museum. 2020. “Cylinder seal.” London: The British Museum.
10 Woolley, L. 1961a. Art of the World: Mesopotamia and the Middle East. London: Methuen Publishing.