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The backs of some sealings from Nineveh 5

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2014

Petr Charvát
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Extract

In 1930 to 1931, the British Museum expedition to Nineveh included among its activities there a stratigraphical sounding which resulted in the establishment of a sequence of prehistoric and early historic remains in northern Mesopotamia over a considerable chronological period (on the deep sounding of Nineveh see now Gut 1995; Gut 2002, esp. pp. 17–22, and also Gut 1999). This sequence, comprising five broadly defined phases, extends from the Neolithic (Ninevite 1) to the early third millennium BC (Ninevite 5).

In 1989 I had the opportunity to study archaeological materials deposited in the British Museum in London. I was interested in the earliest Mesopotamian sealings — those of Tell Arpachiyah and Nineveh — and was provided not only with Ninevite 2–3 sealings which I had requested, but also with those of Ninevite 5, so I documented the latter as well. After publishing the Ninevite 2–3 items (Charvát 1994), I had no opportunity to publish the remainder.

However, in 2001 Dominique Collon published an analysis of the seal impressions found in the Ninevite 5 archaeological strata documented by the Thompson and Mallowan expedition (Collon 2001; see also Collon 2003). When “Nineveh” was announced as the theme of the 49e Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, I decided to present a paper on the detailed information I had recorded for a number of the backs of the sealings studied by Collon. My work builds upon Collon's art-historical analysis of the obverse of the sealings, but here I am concentrating on the “hidden faces” of the seal impressions in order to extend my study of the character of socially engineered exchange practices in the protohistorical period of early Mesopotamia.

Type
Research Article
Information
IRAQ , Volume 67 , Issue 1: Nineveh. Papers of the XLIXe Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, Part Two , Spring 2005 , pp. 391 - 397
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 2005

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