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Chapter 11 - The Seal Impressions of the Westbau and Building D, and the Wooden Tablets
Theo van den Hout, University of Chicago
Book:

A History of Hittite Literacy

Published online:

18 December 2020

Print publication:

07 January 2021, pp 218-233
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Summary

The thousands of bullae and other objects impressed with seals found in the Hittite capital Hattusa have thus far been interpreted, almost exclusively, as related to wooden tablets. The seal impressions contain the names and very often also the titles of kings and high-ranking officials allegedly witnessing royal decisions recorded on the wooden tablets that were lost in fires that destroyed the buildings where they were kept. Such buildings would have housed the state archives of the Hittite kingdom. This theory leaves a lot of essential questions unanswered. Instead, using Neo-Assyrian and later parallels, it is proposed that these collections of sealings were used as reference collections to check the authenticity of a seal and to detect forgeries. Seal forgeries were common in the ancient Near East and checking earlier impressions from the same persons was the only way to verify the authenticity of incoming sealed documents and goods.