Circular Signatures: Getting a better view of Mesopotamia’s smallest art form

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Readers of BAR are familiar with many of the great works of Mesopotamian art that were produced in what is now modern Iraq over several millennia: the Neo-Assyrian palace reliefs, the stele of Hammurabi, the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III, statues of gods and rulers and the gold objects found in the Royal Tombs of Ur.^a These objects inspire awe both because of their artistry and because they tell us important things about the religious, economic and political lives of the people of that culture.

There is another class of Mesopotamian artwork that has been much more difficult to appreciate because of its tiny size and peculiar shape, but it is fully as remarkable—the carved cylinder seal. For about 3,000 years (c. 3400–400 B.C.E.), cylinder seals played a significant role in the lives of Mesopotamians, and the designs carved on them became one of the great art forms of the region.

Cylinder seals were usually carved from stone and were quite small—between 0.5 and 1.5 inches high. They appeared about the same time that cuneiform writing on clay was invented. These little cylinder seals were one of the early administrative tools to emerge with the rise of bureaucracies.

Writing itself was created to keep track of incoming and outgoing goods in temples and palaces. It soon became clear that some way was needed to identify those responsible for the transactions described on the 056 clay tablets and for the accuracy of the amount of goods sealed in a jar. Since very few people could actually write, someone came up with the idea of creating a small cylinder carved with an intricate design that could be rolled across the face of a damp tablet, leaving a mirror image of the design impressed on the clay. The impression could be identified with the person responsible (or at least the office the person held) and thus served essentially as our signatures do today.

As time went on, the popularity of cylinder seals spread from governmental officials to the wider public. Seals came to be used to authenticate contracts, wills, adoptions, letters, etc. Over the millennia thousands of seals were produced.

Because each seal constituted the identity marker of a single person or office, the design on it had to be unique. The artisans who carved these seals thus had to develop a great capacity for variety in their designs. In this way, seal making became one of the principal elements of artistic expression in Mesopotamian culture. Many of these seals are miniature masterpieces. The fine detail on the best of the seals is nothing short of astonishing.

Over the centuries, the making of seals spread from Mesopotamia and Iran to the Levant and even Egypt. Because of their large numbers, we can follow the development of seal art quite well from c. 3400 to about 400 B.C.E.

During the Neo-Assyrian period in the early first millennium B.C.E., cylinder seals began to lose their popularity to stamp seals. Stamp seals had smaller surfaces to decorate and were more convenient to stamp. As papyrus documents began to replace the more bulky clay tablets, cylinder seals essentially died out (following a brief renaissance in the Persian period, c. 515–400 B.C.E.).

Despite their value as cultural artifacts, cylinder seals have been one of the least adequately published forms of ancient Near Eastern art. Several problems have plagued editors working with them.

Perhaps most important, they have been very difficult to photograph. A conventional photograph can show only about a third of a seal’s curved surface, and the large number of cylinder seals found across the Near East have made it impractical to publish multiple photographs of each seal that could show all the elements of the carved scene. Most published volumes of seals don’t even contain photos of the seals themselves but only an image of a new clay impression of the design. Such impressions show the entire scene and are valuable sources of some information, but photographic images of the seal itself can provide important data unattainable from the impression. Finally, because of the large number of seals, the tendency 057 has been to publish them at their actual size (i.e., very small), with many such impressions appearing on each photographic plate in a volume. The tiny size of the published images has meant that details of the carvers’ art and motifs have been impossible to analyze carefully. The artisans who carved the seals often made use of characteristics of the individual seal’s stone as part of their artistic designs. If you don’t see the surface of the seal itself, you miss important aspects of the design. Clearly, a way of documenting cylinder seals that provided information about their actual carved surfaces would be extremely valuable.

In 2006, Bruce Zuckerman, Ken Zuckerman and Marilyn Lundberg Melzian of the West Semitic Research Project of the University of Southern California and the Spurlock Museum of the University of Illinois began working with the BetterLight Large Format Digital Photography Company to develop a new method. The team used high resolution, progressive-scan digital imaging to take flat pictures of the cylindrical surface of a seal.

After a pilot project using seals from the Spurlock’s collection, Bruce and his team built a 360-degree camera, along with a Reflectance 058 Transformation Imaging (RTI) dome, about which you have read in these pages.^b Using this technology, we have documented the Spurlock collection in a way not used for any other set of seals. A new interactive exhibit at the museum highlights images such as the ones shown in this article.

Two examples will illustrate the value of this equipment. The first comes from the Persian period (c. 500–400 B.C.E.). It features a magus (a Persian priest) seated on a throne, with two other magi attending him, one before him and one behind him. Each of the three magi holds three sticks, probably to be identified as a barsom, a collection of twigs that symbolized the life-giving vegetation provided to humanity by Ahura-Mazda. A winged sun-disc symbolizing Ahura-Mazda sits below the three magi, rather than above them, where it is normally displayed.

If an impression were the only published 059 illustration of this seal, no one would have any hint as to why the artisan carved Ahura-Mazda’s symbol below the figures. A view of the actual surface of the seal with a 360-degree image, however, explains why. The reason relates to the coloring of the seal’s stone, which is made of banded agate. Part of the seal consists of bands of white and brown that dip quite low on one side of the seal, while rising on both sides nearly to the top of the seal opposite the low point. The artist, in looking at the seal stone, clearly envisioned the light bands as sunbeams and placed the sun disc directly at the low point of the bands so that the rising white agate could be seen as the sun’s rays bursting forth at dawn. None of this would be visible on a clay impression.

My second example comes from an Old Babylonian seal (c. 1800–1600 B.C.E.) and illustrates a curious fact: In many cases, the artist took more care in carving the face of a deity, especially a goddess, than the face of the king. In the illustration on p. 56, we see the seal of Dakia, son of Damiq-ilishu, servant of Samsuiluna, king of Babylon. The king is in his military uniform and stands before the goddess Lama, who raises her hands in blessing. The artist who carved this fine seal took extraordinary care to depict the goddess’s tiny face, creating detailed eyes, rounded cheeks and a well-articulated nose, lips and chin. This seal illustrates the extraordinary detail that is possible in carving these seals. However, in the depiction of the king, these details are missing. They are only crudely carved, with basic angular eyes and nose and bare horizontal lines creating the lips and chin.

What accounts for this common practice of carving the goddess’s face in detail—but not the king’s? It supports the argument that the royal depictions were not intended to be portraits of the current king.¹ The ruler in these scenes represents kingship in general, rather than a specific person.^c Actual portraiture of kings in Mesopotamian art is quite rare, so this circumstance is not surprising. The goddesses, on the other hand, are very specific personages. A slapdash portrait of a goddess might make her angry and lead to serious trouble for the artisan and perhaps the owner of the seal.

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This also illuminates our understanding of kingship during the Old Babylonian period. The earlier rulers of the Ur III and the Isin-Larsa periods (c. 2100–1800 B.C.E.) tended to portray themselves as gods, and they appear as such on the cylinder seals of that time. They are shown seated upon a divine throne accepting offerings from their worshipers. However, the Amorite kings who later came to power in the Old Babylonian period (c. 1800–1600 B.C.E.) had no tradition of divine kingship. They were human, and their representations on cylinder seals reflect that difference. Rather than assuming the position of the god, the Amorite king on these seals becomes the worshiper. He is the human intermediary between the divine and his subjects. Because kings were mortal, and somewhat transient, the seal makers made no effort to develop a portraiture for them; there would be no need to change the seal when a new ruler ascended the throne. The figure on the seal thus represents any king who was in power.

The new images reveal many other things about the seals—how the artisans could use small imperfections on the stone as eyes for some of their characters, how they often centered the focus of their scenes by placing the most important element upon a discoloration in the stone. The high resolution of the images allows scholars to see evidence of the carving techniques that could not be observed in earlier photographs. You can see other examples at the Spurlock Museum’s website, www.spurlock.illinois.edu, and you can visit a unique, interactive exhibit in the museum’s Middle Eastern Gallery. These tiny masterpieces are finally coming into their own.