ART. 4 ANCIENT ORIENTAL SEALS CASANOWICZ S 



was for many centuries the only one in use, and so deeply rooted 

 that long after the fall of Babylon its heirs, the Persians, continued 

 to use it alongside of the flat seal. 



The cylinder seals vary in size from two to three-fifths of an inch 

 in diameter, and from three-quarters of an inch to an inch and a half 

 in length. Some are as much as one and three-quarters or even 

 two inches long, but they are quite exceptional. In some of the 

 early Babylonian cylinder seals the surface on which the device was 

 engraved is more or less concave (pi. 1, No. Id), approaching in 

 shape a hollow spool. The probable reason for this is that the 

 tablet was usually convex on its surface and the cylinder was made 

 concave to fit it. In the later period the cylinder itself became con- 

 vex or barrel shaped (pi. 1, No. Ic). But as a rule the surface of 

 the cylinder seal is parallel to the axis. The cylinders are usually 

 pierced lengthwise through the center, presumably for the purpose 

 of inserting a swivel that would enable them to be rolled over the 

 clay, and also to pass through a thread by which they miglit be 

 suspended from the neck or wrist. 



At the beginning of the first millennium, B. C, appears or reap- 

 pears, as the case might be, in Assyria the more practical and con- 

 venient flat seal and gradually also passed into Babylonia, being 

 used in both countries alongside of the cylinder. It has frequently 

 the form of a truncated cone or pyramid, rounded at the top, with 

 an elliptical and somewhat convex base for receiving the device. 

 Sometimes the section approximates a parallelogram with truncated 

 angles. It was pierced near the top for a string or wire. So that 

 under the last kings of Assyria, and still more during the second 

 Babylonian Empire (605-538 B. C.) and the Achaemenian kings of 

 Persia (538-334 B. C.) both cylinders and cones may have been 

 produced in the same workshop. Later, under the Seleucides (since 

 312 B. C.) and the Sassanides (since 226 A. D.) the cone or pyram- 

 idal seal was flattened more and more into a spheroid and scaraboid 

 until it assumed the shape of a heavy ring, and the cylinder ceased 

 to be used. 



Comparatively few tablets, and those of the Persian period, are 

 found sealed with flat seals. In a number of cases the impressions 

 of both the cylinder and the flat seal of an individual are stamped on 

 documents (pi. 1, Nos. 1 and 2). 



The oldest seals that have been discovered in Egypt are likewise 

 cylinder seals, ranging in size from half an inch to three and a half 

 inches in length, and from a quarter of an inch to three-quarters of 

 an inch in diameter. The history of the cylinder seal in Egypt goes 

 back to predynastic times, and it w^as in general use down to the 

 twelfth dynasty (2,000-1,788 B. C), when it was mostly susperseded 



