from Part III - Egypt
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 April 2018
Sealing technology first appears in Egypt around 3600 BCE during the Naqada II period of the Predynastic. Thereafter, the use of seals undergoes a lengthy evolution, responding to the shifting structure of the country’s political system, as well as changes in cultural, religious, and artistic traditions that spanned some three millennia. This chapter will provide a comprehensive, typological overview of the evolution in seal forms (including cylinders, stamps, scarabs, and other specialized seal forms) and iconography, and discuss continuities and discontinuities that characterize Egyptian sealing traditions. Here we will examine the evolving modes of seal usage, both as administrative tools and as artifacts that expressed a wider suite of religious and cultural aspects of Egyptian society. Particularly valuable in the Egyptian record is the rich textual source material which illuminates the ways seals and sealing systems related to functioning administrative systems. The following discussion will enmesh the physical evidence within a selection of relevant ancient documentary sources. This review of sealing traditions in Egypt will include a case study. In the context of the present discussion the Abydos case study will be used to illustrate methodologies and issues in the recovery, analysis, and interpretation of seals and sealings in the Egyptian archaeological record.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.