Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-g8jcs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T00:35:09.885Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The backs of some sealings from Nineveh 5

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2014

Petr Charvát
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In 1930 to 1931, the British Museum expedition to Nineveh included among its activities there a stratigraphical sounding which resulted in the establishment of a sequence of prehistoric and early historic remains in northern Mesopotamia over a considerable chronological period (on the deep sounding of Nineveh see now Gut 1995; Gut 2002, esp. pp. 17–22, and also Gut 1999). This sequence, comprising five broadly defined phases, extends from the Neolithic (Ninevite 1) to the early third millennium BC (Ninevite 5).

In 1989 I had the opportunity to study archaeological materials deposited in the British Museum in London. I was interested in the earliest Mesopotamian sealings — those of Tell Arpachiyah and Nineveh — and was provided not only with Ninevite 2–3 sealings which I had requested, but also with those of Ninevite 5, so I documented the latter as well. After publishing the Ninevite 2–3 items (Charvát 1994), I had no opportunity to publish the remainder.

However, in 2001 Dominique Collon published an analysis of the seal impressions found in the Ninevite 5 archaeological strata documented by the Thompson and Mallowan expedition (Collon 2001; see also Collon 2003). When “Nineveh” was announced as the theme of the 49e Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, I decided to present a paper on the detailed information I had recorded for a number of the backs of the sealings studied by Collon. My work builds upon Collon's art-historical analysis of the obverse of the sealings, but here I am concentrating on the “hidden faces” of the seal impressions in order to extend my study of the character of socially engineered exchange practices in the protohistorical period of early Mesopotamia.

Type
Research Article
Information
IRAQ , Volume 67 , Issue 1: Nineveh. Papers of the XLIXe Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, Part Two , Spring 2005 , pp. 391 - 397
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 2005

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Boehmer, R. M. 2001: Uruk — Früheste Siegelabrollungen (Ausgrabungen in Uruk-Warka, Endberichte 24), Mainz: Philipp von Zabern.Google Scholar
Brandes, M. 1979: Siegelabrollungen aus den archaischen Bauschichten in Uruk-Warka I—II (Freiburger altorientalische Studien Bd. 3), Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag GmbH.Google Scholar
Charvát, P. 1992: The token of the covenant: Stamp seals of the ancient Near East. Archiv Orientálni 60, 279–85.Google Scholar
Charvát, P. 1994: The seals and their functions in the Halaf- and Ubaid cultures (A case study of materials from Tell Arpachiyah and Nineveh 2–3). In: Wartke, R.-B. (ed.): Handwerk und Technologie im Alten Orient — Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Technik im Altertum. Internationale Tagung Berlin, 12.-15. März 1991. Mainz: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 9–16.Google Scholar
Charvát, P. 1996: On sealings and officials: Sumerian DUB and SANGA, c. 3500–2500 BC, in Zemánek, P. (ed.), Studies in Near Eastern Languages and Literatures — Memorial Volume of Karel Petráček, Prague: Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Oriental Institute, 181–92.Google Scholar
Charvát, P. 2002: Mesopotamia before History, London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Collon, D. 2001: Les empreintes de la période Ninivite 5 à Ninive, in Breniquet, C. et Kepinski, Ch. (eds.), Etudes mésopotamiennes, Recueil de textes offert à Jean-Louis Huot, Paris: Editions Recherche sur les Civilisations, 121–50.Google Scholar
Collon, D. 2003: The Ninevite 5 seal impressions from Nineveh, in Rova, E. and Weiss, H. (eds.), The Origins of North Mesopotamian Civilization: Ninevite 5 Chronology, Economy, Society (Subartu IX), Turnhout, 249–69.Google Scholar
Frangipane, M. 2000: Chapter 9: The development of administration from collective to centralized economies in the Mesopotamian world — The transformation of an institution from system-serving to self-serving, in Feinmann, G. M., Manzanilla, L. (eds.), Cultural Evolution: Contemporary Viewpoints, New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, 215–32.Google Scholar
Gut, R. 1995: Unbeabsichtigte Ergebnisse, in Finkbeiner, U., Dittmann, R., Hauptmann, H. (eds.), Beiträge zur Kulturgeschichte Vorderasiens – Festschrift für Rainer Michael Boehmer, Mainz: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 183–6.Google Scholar
Gut, R. 1999: Relative und absolute Chronologie in der vorderasiatischen Archäologie — Einige Anmerkungen zum Thema, in Kühne, H., Bernbeck, R., Bartl, K. (eds.), Fluchtpunkt Uruk — Archäologische Einheit aus methodischer Vielfalt, Schriften für Hans Jörg Nissen, Rahden/Westf.: Verlag Marie Leidorf, 19–28.Google Scholar
Gut, R. 2002: The significance of the Uruk sequence at Nineveh, in Postgate, J. N. (ed.), Artefacts of Complexity — Tracking the Uruk in the Near East (British School of Archaeology in Iraq — Iraq Archaeological Reports 5), Warminster: Aris & Phillips Ltd, 17–48.Google Scholar
Matthews, D. 1997: The Early Glyptic of Tell Brak — Cylinder Seals of Third Millennium Syria (Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis — Series Archaeologica 15), Fribourg and Göttingen: University Press and Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.Google Scholar
Matthews, R. 1993a: Cities, Seals, and Writing: Archaic Seal Impressions from Jemdet Nasr and Ur (Materialien zu den frühen Schrifterzeugnissen des Vorderen Orients II), Berlin: Gebr. Mann Verlag.Google Scholar
Matthews, R. 1993b: Seals and sealings (1–261), in Green, A. R. (ed.), The 6G Ash-Tip and its Contents: Cultic and Administrative Discard from the Temple? (Abu Salabikh Excavations 4), London: British School of Archaeology in Iraq, 23–81.Google Scholar
Matthews, R. 2002: Secrets of the Dark Mound – Jemdet Nasr 1926–1928 (British School of Archaeology in Iraq — Iraq Archaeological Reports 6), Warminster: Aris & Phillips Ltd.Google Scholar
Pittman, H. 1994: The Glazed Steatite Glyptic Style (Berliner Beiträge zum Vorderen Orient 16), Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag.Google Scholar
Rova, E. 1994: Ricerche sui sigilli a cilindro vicino-orientali del periodo di Uruk/Jemdet Nasr, Roma: Istituto per l'Oriente C. A. Nallino.Google Scholar
von Wickede, A. 1990: Prähistorische Stempelglyptik in Vorderasien, München: Profil Verlag.Google Scholar
Winter, I. 2000: Le palais imaginaire: Scale and meaning in the iconography of Neo-Assyrian royal seals, in Uehlinger, Ch. (ed.), Images as Media — Sources for the Cultural History of the Near East and the Eastern Mediterranean (1st Millennium BCE), Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 175, Fribourg — Göttingen: University Press and Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 51–87.Google Scholar
Wright, H. T., Miller, N. and Redding, R. 1980: Time and process in an Uruk rural center, in L'archéologie de l'Irak du début de l'époque néolithique à 333 avant notre ère (Colloques internationaux du CNRS No. 580), Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 265–84.Google Scholar
Zettler, R. 1987: Sealings as artifacts of institutional administration in ancient Mesopotamia, Journal of Cuneiform Studies 39, 197–240.Google Scholar
Zettler, R. 1989: Clay sealings from the Early Dynastic I levels (Levels XI–IX) of the Inanna Temple at Nippur: A preliminary analysis. Manuscript of a contribution to the Baltimore Archaeological Meetings, 01 1989. [I wish to thank Anne Draffkorn Kilmer for bringing this text to my attention.]Google Scholar