YBC: Highlights 131 (2024-03-05)

Created by: Wagensonner, Klaus

Digitizing Seals (YPM BC 006144, NBC 3171; Late Old Babylonian period (about 1700–1600 BC) to Kassite period (1595–1155 BC); 33 x 19 mm; jasper or aventurine)

This colorful seal shows a seated male deity with a beard and a horned headdress facing left and holding out his right hand. He wears a long robe and sits on an unadorned stool. He is surrounded by two suppliant goddesses in long flounced dresses and horned headdresses holding up both hands. There is a so-called Kassite cross in front of the seated deity and six encased lines of inscription behind the suppliant goddesses. Although not apparent at first glance, the seal is a reused late Old Babylonian seal with two suppliant goddesses facing an inscription. It was recarved in Kassite times. There are faint traces of vertical and horizontal lines, as well as wedge heads under the cross, by the outstretched hand of the seated deity, and by the stool. The cross, inscription, and seated deity are carved in a different style than the two suppliant goddesses and in markedly lower relief, indicating that the cross and the seated deity occupy the space of a previous, now erased inscription. No traces of older carvings are visible in the inscription field, and it is likely that this part of the cylinder was blank in the seal’s original Old Babylonian manifestation. Traditionally, cylinder seals have been published as black and white photographs of modern impressions. A carefully produced impression on clay or a polymer like Sculpey smoothed with non-shimmering talcum powder (for example, Caldesene) allows a more detailed and complete view of the iconography of a seal. Multicolored stones, such as the one used here, obscure the carvings on the seal cylinder. However, photographed under raking light, the modern impression revealed the faint traces of the earlier carvings, which are close to invisible on the mottled surface of the seal. Modern and ancient impressions of cylinder seals can also be captured using a photographic method known as Reflectance Transformation Imaging. Photographic techniques and digital enhancement can aid the examination and interpretation of ancient artifacts. The seal imaged here was captured using High Dynamic Range photography, which is also a valuable tool for the capture of cuneiform tablets. By merging different exposures this method enhances the carvings as well as the texture and coloration of the stone. Each seal is placed in the center of a turntable with a stationary camera. The camera captures sixty angles around the circumference of the seal for each full rotation. These images are then stitched together to create a flattened, two-dimensional digital roll-out. With some stone types, such as hematite, the carvings are easily legible on the seal stone, whereas other materials, such as the stone of this seal, generally obscure the carvings on the seal stone. This is also the case with the digital roll-outs, which cannot stand alone without an impression in clay or polymer. But the digital rollout can emphasize differences in carving depth, such as in the seal here, between the two Old Babylonian suppliant goddesses and the Kassite seated deity. In addition to being an aid in uncovering the carving histories of seals, the digital roll-out provides insights into how the seal carver used colorations and patterning in the stone to emphasize or embellish specific iconographic elements, using the interplay between stone and carving to create and emphasize layers of meaning in the iconography, visible only on the seal stone, but not on an impression (Pitard 2014). See it in the exhibition “Ancient Mesopotamia Speaks ... Highlights from the Yale Babylonian Collection” at the Peabody Museum of Natural History, New Haven, 6 April 2019 – 30 June 2020

credit: Lassen, Agnete; Wagensonner, Klaus
image credit: Wagensonner, Klaus