him. The man holds a knife in his hand with which to slay the
goat, but he is not looking back at the animal, as is
usual in such scenes.
XIII. SEALS OF THE PARTHIAN PERIOD (247 B.C. in Persia, 143 B.C.
in Mesopotamia to 226 A.D.):15
- (D. 1555). Dark chalcedony. Globular stamp seal with two sides
flattened, a rather large transverse perforation,
and an oval base. 25 x 18 x 20 mm.
A standing winged victory, wearing a fillet on his head and a
Babylonian costume with a short skirt, holds a
lily in his hands.
-
(D. 1556). Carnelian. Globular stamp seal with two sides
slightly flattened, a transverse perforation, and a
nearly circular base. 12 x 11 x 9 mm. Enlarged on Plate VI.
A standing winged victory, wearing a fillet on his head and an
Iranian costume with trousers, holds a wreath
tied with a wide flowing ribbon as a symbol of power.
-
(D. 1557). Chalcedony. Globular stamp seal with two sides
flattened, a transverse perforation, and a nearly
circular base. 18 x 15 x 14 mm.
Some kind of animal with long backward sloping horns or ears,
long legs, and a short tail; possibly a hare.
-
(D. 1558). Chalcedony. Globular stamp seal with two sides
flattened, a rather large transverse perforation, and a
nearly circular base. 20 x 17 x 18 mm.
Apparently some kind of bird with a long curved tail. Two
elongated dots appear back of the head.
XIV. SEALS OF THE SASANIAN PERIOD (226 to 651 A.D.):15
- (D. 1559). Chalcedony. Hemispheroid stamp seal with a
transverse perforation and a circular base; chipped on
the edge. 20 x 15 mm.
In the center is an elaborate ornamental or symbolic device,
consisting in part of what is apparently a
monogram. Such devices are common on Sasanian seals, but ours is
unique in being slightly different on its two
sides. On the upper border of the seal is a Pahlavi inscription
in a fairly early script, partly broken away and reading
as follows: Wisa Mitnatun. Since this makes no sense and we know
that the Sasanian seal cutters often omitted
letters accidentally, we should undoubtedly read Wisa[t i]
Mitnatun, "Wish-at, the son of Mitnatun," with which
names compare ,At[un]mitn i magu i Wisatan, 16 listed
by F. Justi, Iranisches Namenbuch, 1895, P. Pa. On p. 371a of the same volume
Justi lists Wisatan as a patronymic from
Wisat. The frequent use of the determinative pronoun in Pahlavi
(i, zi) in the sense of "son" is identical with that of
the same pronoun in Old Akkadian.17
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14a. A number of seal impressions found at Assur have
accompanying inscriptions which permit a dating in the
Middle-Assyrian time, cf.
Moortgat, Zeitschrift fur Assyriologie, XX, 1940, pp. 1 ff. In
this article which Professor Meek has been unable to consult new
criteria for the
Middle-Assyrian glyptic have consequently been proposed, and on
the strength of Moortgat's argumentation, 1 should date the seal
No. 43 to
this early period ( 13 th century B.C.).- H.I.
15. It is a striking but inexplicable fact that there
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are thousands of Seleucid, Parthian, and Sasanian seals in the
various public and private collections of the world, and yet
scarcely a single one
has been excavated by any archaeological expedition in the field.
Practically all of them have come from the clandestine digging of
the
natives; hence their provenance and stratigraphical context are
quite unknown. The result is that we have scarcely any data
wherewith to
distinguish the one from the other and I arn not at all certain
that I have divided our seals correctly among the three periods.
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