Table of Contents for Near Eastern Archaeology 87.1 (March 2024)
Pp. 4–13: “Religion(s) in Seals: Old and New Challenges,” by Fabio Porzia
Although seals are very mobile items and often reused, and although they can be regarded as mass media products given their large distribution in time, space, and different social classes, they are often used by scholars as a tool to map political, cultural, and religious borders. This contribution aims at reassessing the validity of using religious iconography on seals from the first-millennium BCE southern Levant for the study of ancient religion(s) from three aspects: that religion is thematized beyond ethnic borders; that religious motifs are studied beyond the quest of their origin; and that divine images are studied beyond the compulsion to provide them with proper names. Introducing the notion of adaption as a short form for adoption and adaptation, this article supports a more nuanced understanding of seal iconography in terms of shared cultural infrastructure and a common cultural landscape.
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Pp. 14-19: “Mastering the Seven-Headed Serpent: A Stamp Seal from Hazor Provides a Missing Link between Cuneiform and Biblical Mythology,” by Christoph Uehlinger
The Stamp Seals from the Southern Levant (SSSL) project is based on a comprehensive corpus, big data, and complex historical scenarios. Sometimes, though, an individual artifact stands out as a highlight in its own right. Such is the case with a stamp seal discovered recently at Tel Hazor. It is unusual in several respects, but mainly because of its spectacular base engraving. The main scene represents a hero fighting a coiled, seven-headed serpent; it is enhanced by a series of mixed creatures and secondary motifs. This article offers a description and analysis of the object, situating its iconography in the long history of combat myths spanning from mid-third-millennium southern Mesopotamia through second-millennium northern Syria to first-millennium Phoenicia and Israel. Most significant for a historian of Near Eastern mythology, the seal provides a visual missing link in the main motif’s literary transition from Late Bronze Age Ugarit to the Hebrew Bible.
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Pp. 20-25: “Stamp Seals as Jewelry: Identifying Body Ornaments through Seal Impressions,” by Noa Ranzer
Stamp seals had various functions in the Iron Age southern Levant. In addition to their use as stamping devices, they were also worn on the body like other pieces of jewelry and thus formed but one part of a larger design comprising different objects (e.g., metal wires, pins, fibulae). In their archaeological contexts, however, most seals are detached from their original mountings. Thus, we are left wondering how such a seal was displayed when worn on the body. As part of a more extensive ongoing study on the function of stamp seals during the Iron Age, this article examines how seal impressions can serve as an important dataset to begin identifying specific mounting techniques and, thus, the possible ways different seals were used as jewelry.
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Pp. 26-31: “Making a Good Impression: A Typology of Mounted Seal Impressions in the Middle Bronze Age Southern Levant,” by Tatjana Beuthe
Mounted seals have frequently been uncovered in Middle Bronze Age archaeological contexts in the Levant and Egypt. However, direct evidence for the deployment of such seals to mark objects does not appear to have been systematically studied to date. This article presents an initial typology of impressions made using mounted seals found in the southern Levant. Material from the Corpus of Stamp Seals from the Southern Levant (CSSL) database indicates southern Levantine stamp seals set in rings and attached to other types of ornamentation were widely used as tools to create impressions.
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Pp. 32-40: “‘Male until Proven Otherwise?’: Searching for Women with the Help of Inscribed Stamp Seals from Jerusalem,” by Bruno Biermann
Archaeological finds are often framed within androcentric biases, for example, representing inscribed seals as male-owned and used objects. However, this picture crumbles under critical examination. This article addresses presumptions about sex and seal ownership, focusing on inscribed seals from the Iron Age IIB–III from Jerusalem. Therefore, this article demonstrates how gender-archaeological research can contribute to new perspectives on Levantine stamp seals and material culture. This approach is based on provenanced artifacts found in archaeological excavations and their context and the careful examination of how gender is expressed or remains ambiguous in the inscriptions on these small objects. The presented dataset of inscribed seals and impressions on sealings and jar handles from Jerusalem suggests that women owned and used inscribed seals for a variety of purposes, including commerce and sealing of containers and jars, as well as being buried with them.
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Pp. 42-52: “Scratching the Surface of Middle Bronze Age Scarabs: Investigating Enigmatic Marks on Stamp Seals from Lachish and Megiddo,” by Nadia Ben-Marzouk and Ben Greet
A distinct feature on many Middle Bronze Age scarabs from the southern Levant is the presence of chromatic marks on the backs of these objects, often described as longitudinal lines. Previous explanations have fallen into one of three proposals: Either they are the product of production-related techniques related to firing and glazing, intentionally applied marks, or the byproduct of use-wear related or depositional practices. To date, no critical investigation of these enigmatic marks has been published and thus no consensus reached. However, through new high-resolution photography of the stamp seals from the sites of Lachish and Megiddo in the southern Levant, a systematic analysis was recently permitted. This paper presents the results from a study on these enigmatic marks and a discussion on what the new photography reveals about previous interpretations and possible new directions for the study of this corpus.
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