Seal

Museum number:

9-18755

Permalink:

ark:/21549/hm21090018755

Accession number:

Acc.4531

Donor:

Maria Canizales and William Canizales

Collection place:

Chogha Zanbil Ziggurat, Khuzestan Province, Southwest Iran

Culture or time period:

Middle Elamite (ca. 1300–1100 BC)

Object type:

archaeology

Object class:

Seals (artifacts)

Department:

Asia (except western Russia)

Comment:

Excerpt from Too Good To Be True Exhibition Handlist (1992):MESOPOTAMIAN CYLINDER SEALS Used to authenticate all manner of legal and business transactions written on clay, cylinder seals have a long history in the ancient Near East (circa 3500 to 300 B.C.). Since a good copy of a seal could be used to legitimize a forged document, there were proscriptions against this in antiquity. Modern forgeries of seals, however, are made to satisfy the demand of collectors. Seals of all styles and periods of the ancient Near East have been copied and imitated since the early 19th century. Those in the styles of the finer artistic achievements in seal carving are most often attempted by forgers, since they are the most avidly sought by collectors and so command higher prices.The upper seal (no. 12) is a fine example of the bravura occasionally attempted by the better forgers. In spite of the fineness of their technique, they invariably fail in some way to be completely convincing. The present example is delicately carved in a bold, sure style imitative of the famous wall reliefs from the Neo-Assyrian palaces now in the British Museum and elsewhere. The grisly scene of the impaled prisoners was suggested by a similar scene from the reliefs in the Southwest Palace at Nineveh showing the siege and conquest of Lachish in Palestine by Sennacherib (704 to 681 B.C.). The style of the other figures is closer to those of the palace reliefs of Ashurbanipal (668 to 627 B.C.) at Nimrud. A portion of the Siege of Lachish relief of Sennacherib in the British Museum showing three impaled prisoners without the walls of the city; below, a battering ram assaults the ramparts under the protection of archers. After Austen Henry Layard, Delle scoperte di Ninive descrizione (translated into Italian by Ercole Malvasia), Bologna, 1855, p. 253. Besides the pristine condition of the surface of a seal purported to be 2600 years old, the material (a reused ancient shell core) is one never used for seals of this period (agate, cornelian, chalcedony and jasper were used for the finer pieces, serpentine for the others). Additional indicators of its fraudulent nature are the bogus cuneiform inscription with non-characters,the supplicant standing figure's missing right foot, the bare head of the "king", and the curious symbol over the head of the unarmed soldier. Compare the other seal (no. 13), which is a genuine Neo-Assyrian serpentine cylinder. This is a fine example of the linear style seals of the same period and shows a unity of style and composition that is lacking in the fake. Fake Mesopotamian cylinder seal made from an ancient shell core. A bareheaded, bearded "king" in an elaborate, belted robe standing, right, with two arrows in his) right hand and a longbow in his left; facing him are a bearded prisoner who bows in supplication (with a pseudo-cuneiform inscription above), a standing, bearded figure in an elaborate, belted robe with hands raised in adoration or supplication, and a bearded, helmeted (though weaponless) soldier (?) in a short skirt; behind the "king" is a gruesome scene of three headless bodies impaled on stakes in a wooded area (indicated by four trees) inhabited by a large bird (a vulture?); above the helmeted figure, a defective winged sun disk(?). The style imitates the finer wall reliefs from the Neo-Assyrian palaces at Nimrud and Nineveh. The design on the recut ancient shell-core cylinder seal probably was done sometime in the 20th century. 9-18755.

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