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Online resources for the study of Mesopotamian stamp and cylinder seals, often with incised legends naming the owner, his profession or educational standing, his patronymic and, looking up in the Mesopotamian hierarchy, his administrative affiliations, are difficult to come by, even though this unassuming administrative tool has played a very substantial role in the development of writing, and in the smooth functioning of an advanced ancient society. Mespotamian Seals is offered to bring attention to the admittedly limited text annotation files of the CDLI as one of several avenues of research available in a sub-field more often pursued by archaeologists and art historians than by philologists (CDLI’s initial seals work is described here; cleansing of those file entries is being undertaken by Richard Firth). The CDLI catalogue currently [12/21/2019] contains entries documenting ca. 53,582 Mesopotamian entries related to seals and sealing: 39,622 represent clay tablets, tags or other sealings, most of whose seal impressions included owner legends, and currently just 7,854 are physical seals; 6,117 CDLI entries represent composites derived from seal impressions, and therefore the negatives of original cylinder seals now lost. |
Terms of use CDLI |
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All CDLI seals
Ayakalla, Umma ensi2 (Ur III, Š46/ii/29 – ŠS9/i)
Late Uruk (ca. 3500-3000 BC)
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The image above depicts a typical cylinder seal of the Ur III period (ca. 2100-2000 BC). Its legend reads “Abbakalla, son of Ur-mes;” the inscription, however, was evidently cut into an imperfectly erased earlier legend, itself probably the more standardized formula “So-and-so, scribe (Sum. dub-sar), son of so-and-so.” The traces of ‛dumu ...’ are clearly visible in a third box below the end of our legend. Click on the image to be taken to CDLI’s entry for the stone artifact. |