2 PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL, MUSEUM vol. 69 



niiineroiis Babylonian inscribed clay tablets. The individual who 

 did not possess a seal made a thumb-nail mark in the soft clay, 

 which was the writing material of Babylonia, alongside of which 

 the scribe usually wrote " thumb-nail mark of NN " and sometimes 

 adding his name.- Even at present the importance attached to the 

 seal in the East is so great that without one no document is regarded 

 as authentic.^ 



Alongside of their legal function it may be assumed that the seals, 

 engraved with the figures and symbols of gods, also served as amulets 

 to protect against evil spirits. It is even thought by some Assyriolo- 

 gists that this object was the primary and original one.* 



And lastly, in connection with their more serious purposes, they 

 were also worn as ornaments. 



HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE SEAL 



The art of stone engraving has been practiced in the Valley of 

 Mesopotamia since the archaic period. The ruins of Nippur (mod- 

 ern Niffer), Lagash (modern Telloh), and of other sites have pre- 

 served examples on plaques of large dimensions. But it was above 

 all developed on the seals which were in use from the earliest time 

 down to the Persian period. It is estimated that about 10,000 

 ancient oriental seals are now in museums and private possession, 

 and the seals dated from the dynasty of Akkad (about 2,800 B. C.) 

 exhibit such an artistic excellence and vigor of execution, never 

 reached afterwards, that a long development of the glyptic art in 

 Babylonia must have preceded them. 



It is an unsettled question wdiether the flat or stamp seal or the 

 cylinder was the earliest form of seal in Mesopotamia. The vast 

 majority of original seals and of impressions of them on clay stop- 

 pers, and especially on clay tablets, are in the form of cylinders. If 

 the cylinder superseded the more convenient flat seal, the reason 

 might perhaps be that the former offered a larger surface for the 

 engraving of a design. The classical land of the cylinder seal is 

 Babylonia, where it is found from the earliest time, at least from the 

 end of the fourth millennium B. C down to the fall of the Neo- 

 Babylonian empire (538 B. C). There the cylinder form of seal 



2 Compare Albert T. Clay, Light on the Old Testament from Babel, 1907, p. 174. The 

 seal-impressing of tablets became customary in the time of the Kings of Akkad (Sargon I 

 and Naram Sin, about 2800 B. C.) ; it became frequent in the time of the Kings of Ur 

 (about 2400 B. C), and reached its greatest extension in the Hammurabi period (about 

 2000 B. C). Under the Neo-Babylonian empire (005 B. C.) it becomes rare. Otto 

 Weber, Altorientalische Siegelbilder (Der Alte Orient), 1920, p. 4. 



3 For the use of seals by the Hebrews in biblical times, see I Kings xxi, 8, and Jeremiah 

 xxxii, 9. 



* Compare Otto Weber, Daemoneubeschwoerung bei don Babyloniern und Assyrern (Der 

 Alte Orient. 7, 4), 1906, p. 35; Morris Jastrow, The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria. 

 1898, p. 672. 



