ART. 4 ' ANCIENT OEIENTAL SEALS — CASANOWICZ 5 



TOOLS USED FOR ENGRAVING AND PIERCING OF THE SEALS 



The early seals were cut with the free hand. The employment of 

 the drill and the wheel can not be established before the middle of the 

 second millennium B. C. Seals in soft material, such as shell, mar- 

 ble, serpentine, etc., could have been engraved with a sharp flint 

 point.^ It is difficult to say when the use of metal tools set in. 

 But the hard stones which already in the time of the dynasty of 

 Akkad (2,800 B. C.) were used for seals, as also the piercing of the 

 oldest stone cylinders, is scarcely thinkable without metal tools. The 

 main tool used may have been that named in Jeremiah xvii, 1, a 

 metal stylus, tipped with a diamond splinter.^° With the discovery 

 of the wheel and drill, the art of gem cutting progressed with the 

 development of the means of expression, as exhibited in the seals 

 of the last Assyrian and Babylonian kings. Tlie tools used were a 

 burr to make small holes, such as dots for stars or the knee and 

 shoulder joints of human figures, a round disk, the edge of which, 

 like a circular saw, would cut a straight line, deeper in the middle, 

 and a round hollow tube, the end of which would make a circle or, if 

 applied at an angle, a semicircle or crescent. The turning of the 

 wheel and drill may at first have been worked by the hand, and in 

 the latest period revolved by the attachment of a wheel which was 

 set in motion with the foot. The piercing of the cylinders w^as 

 probably done with some metal rod, rolled by the hand or revolved 

 with the aid of the string of a bow. The perforation was worked 

 from both ends, as in some seals a slight projection may be noticed 

 inside in the center. It would seem then that nearly all the work 

 had been done with only two instruments — one for round hollows 

 and other for lines, probably using with the tools some hard friable 

 material as emery or corundum. 



The cutting on all ancient seals is in intaglio, which is the earliest 

 form of engraving on hard stone in every country. 



The work of seal engraving is mentioned as a distinct occupa- 

 tion in Ecclesiasticus (Sirach) xxxviii, 27. 



DESIGNS ENGRA%'ED ON THE SEALS AND THEIR ARTISTIC FEATURES 



The designs engraved on the seals are almost always mythologi- 

 cal and religious. Profane subjects are few and belong to a late 

 period. Scenes from industrial life are very rare; husbandry and 



" Herodotus, VII, 69, describing tlie arrows of the Ethiopians in the army of Xerxes, 

 says : " They were tipped with a stone, which was made sharp, and of that sort with 

 which they engrave seals." 



»" " The Mexicans are reported to have managed to cut the hardest roclvs and to engrave 

 finely upon the emerald with nothing but bronze tools. * * * The Peruvians also 

 succeeded in piercing emeralds without iron. Their instrument is said to have been the 

 pointed leaf of the wild plantain, used with fine sand and water. With such a tool the 

 one condition of success was time." Georges Perrot and Charles Chipiez, History of Art 

 in Ancient Egypt, 1883, vol. 2, p. 288. n. 3. 



