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Greek Coin Impressions From Ur

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2014

Edith Porada
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Extract

One of the most intriguing finds made by Sir Leonard Woolley at Ur was a large number of seal impressions on clay the discovery of which he described in the Antiquaries Journal XII (1932) p. 389 as follows:

“… in the uppermost levels there were found remains of the latest period in the city's history, ruins of private houses of the Persian age, and below their foundations the graves of the occupants of the houses. The house remains were scanty, scarcely ever sufficient to yield intelligible ground-plans, but it was clear that for the most part the buildings reproduced with minor alterations the houses of an earlier date whose walls were standing at a lower level. They produced no objects of importance, but the graves did yield a certain number of glazed vases, beads and seals. One clay coffin found in the low ground between the trenches, flush with the modern surface, proved very interesting. It had been plundered, and only a few fragments of bones and no clay or other vessels or beads were left in it, but at the bottom of the coffin there was a collection of nearly two hundred seal-impressions on clay. That these were really a collection was evident, for the lumps of soft clay had been pressed against the gems (the finger-marks were plain on the back and there was no hole through which a string could have been passed and had afterwards been baked so as to make the record permanent; they were illustrations of the specimens in a collector's cabinet.

Type
Research Article
Information
IRAQ , Volume 22 , Issue 1-2: Ur in Retrospect. In Memory of Sir C. Leonard Woolley , Spring-Autumn 1960 , pp. 228 - 234
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 1960 

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References

1 Cf., however, Pl. XXXI, 6b of the present article which presents an exception.

2 In Greece, only temple treasuries seem to have accumulated large collections of engraved stones as a result of gifts of devotees. Cf. the references to the treasure lists of the Parthenon and Hekatom-pedon given by MissRichter, Gisela M. A. in A Catalogue of Engraved Gems of the Classical Style, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1956, p. XXIX Google Scholar.

In the Near East, private persons certainly could possess more than one seal, thus the scribe Taia, son of Apil-sin of Nuzi sealed with at least thirteen different seals ( Seal Impressions of Nuzi, AASOR XXIV (1947), Nos. 35a, 99, 144, 179, 184, 304, 374, 522, 523a, 638, 640, 791, 895Google Scholar). He seems to have used the largest number, but others also employed several different seals, for example, the scribe Itḫapiḫe, son of Taia who used at least four (op. cit. Nos. 35, 498, 691, 708). Furthermore a small collection of eleven seals was found in the tomb of Adoni Nut, an official of an Ammonite king of the seventh century B.C. P.E.F. Annual VI (1953), pl. VI: 1–11; pl. VII: 1–14 Google Scholar.

Large collections, however, are documented only from temple treasuries, e.g. Leemans, W. F., Ishtar of Lagaba and her Dress, SLB I (1), Leiden, 1952, especially p. 29 Google Scholar, line 20 where 217 seals are mentioned. The presence of a large number of presumably engraved stones in the temple precinct is also suggested by a Neo-Babylonian text in which a king orders a search for a cylinder seal “among the stones” ( Smith, Sidney, “The Seal before the God,” J.R.A.S. 1926, pp. 442–446 Google Scholar).

3 This suggestion was made by McDowell, R. H., Stamped and Inscribed Objects from Seleucia on the Tigris, Ann Arbor, 1935, p. 232 Google Scholar.

4 Among the relevant imprints from Seleucia there were two instances in which “… a quantity of sealings similar in form and impressed by a single seal were found together …” (ibid., p. 231). The imprints from Susa ( R.A. XXIV (1927), 21. figs. 90–101Google Scholar to which McDowell referred (ibid. p. 232, note 3), belong to the Seleucid period with the possible exception of No. 101 which is also the only one sealed with one seal while all others have the imprints of two seals on one tag. The examples from Ur, however, each bear the imprint of one seal.

5 EM. 1932—10–8, 233.

6 To be fully discussed in Corpus of Ancient Near Eastern Seals, Vol. II, in preparation.

7 Diogenes Laertius I, 5 7, Loeb Classical Library .

8 Perhaps Legrain, op. cit. No. 738 may also be similarly interpreted.

9 For the use of σϕρᾱγις as seal or seal-ring cf. Aristophanes, frg 321. 12 Ed.; Plato, Hippias Minor 368 b-c and Pollux 5.100. I owe this reference to Dr. W. M. Calder III.

10 On tablets from Nippur the metal of the ring with which an imprint was made is often specified (cf. Legrain, L., The Culture of the Babylonians… P.U.M.B. XIV, (1925), p. 331, n. 2)Google Scholar. Most of those in which the material is indicated are of iron, op. cit., nos. 813, 818, 823, 888, 931, 971, 976), two of gold, op. cit., nos. 820, 840, and in two bronze is indicated, op. cit. nos. 810, 822. For the remaining 27 impressions of rings on the Nippur tablets (op. cit. nos. 809–1,000, passim), the material is apparently not given but this writer would assume them to have been made of the most common material, namely bronze.

11 E.g. the bronze and iron rings found by Ghirshman, R., Village Perse-Achéménide Mémoires de la mission archéologique en Iran. XXXVI (1954), pl. XLVIIGoogle Scholar; also Schmidt, E., Persepolis II, OIP LXIX (1957), pls. 17–19Google Scholar, passim.

12 Robinson, E. S. G., “The Tell el-Mashkuta Hoard of Athenian Tetradrachms,” Numismatic Chronicle 1947, pp. 115–121 Google Scholar. The coins most closely related to ours are pl. V: 1 and 2, the date of which is given by Robinson, op. cit., p. 116.

13 Svoronos, J. N., Les Monnaies d'Athènes, (1923–1926) pls. 10, 12, 13 passim Google Scholar.

14 British Museum Catalogue of Greek Coins; Cyrenaica, pl. V, 15ff., pl. XXXIII, 8ff.

15 Babelon, E., Traité des monnaies grecques et romaines, II/2, (1910), pl. XCVII, 28ffGoogle Scholar.

16 Legrain, Seal Cylinders, Nos. 718–721, 786 and the double heads, nos. 723–725. Similarly, another Lycian coin, B.M.C. Lycia, etc., p. 29, pl. VII: 12, 13, a stater from Telmessus, dated about 410–400, bearing on the reverse the head of Heracles may have served as inspiration for the seal design of Legrain, op. cit. no. 716. Even the double heads, Legrain, op. cit. Nos. 723–725 cited above could have also been influenced by such coins as one from Lampsakos ( Babelon, , Traité II/1, pl. XVI, 18ffGoogle Scholar.; or “Gaza” (op. cit. II/2, pl. CXXIII, 10ff.).

17 Cf. Babelon, , Traité, II/1, pl. XLIX, 9 Google Scholar; also Raymond, Doris, Numismatic Notes and Monographs, 126, 1953, pl. I, 3Google Scholar.

18 Cf. Babelon, , Traité II/2, pl. CXL1X, 3 Google Scholar.

19 Cocks appear late in ancient Near Eastern iconography. A Neo-Babylonian cylinder seal of the sixth to fifth centuries B.C. shows a cock as the object of worship on an altar ( Weber, O., Altorientalische Siegelbilder, Leipzig, 1920, No. 463aGoogle Scholar). An Achaemenian stamp seal with this bird was found at Persepolis, ( Schmidt, , Persepolis II, pl. 19, PT 4 414Google Scholar).

Fighting cocks are seen on a cylinder in Berlin, ( Moortgat, A., Vorderasiatische Rollsiegel, Berlin, 1940, No. 755Google Scholar). Perhaps the same subject was intended on another cylinder ( Catalogue … de Clerq, Vol. 1, 1888, no. 374 Google Scholar, though there a lamp on a stand, presumably the symbol of the god Nusku, appears between the two birds. A cock in fighting posture is placed beneath the inscription on a stamp seal from Tell-en-Nasbeh ( McCown, C. C., Tell-en Nasbeh, Berkeley, 1947, 1. 00Google Scholar), dated about 600 B.C. Probably slightly earlier is the design of a cock on a handle of a clay pot discovered by J. B. Pritchard at Gibeon ( I.L.N. 03 29th, 1958, p. 507, fig. 12Google Scholar). In view of the paucity of a tradition for the representation of the cock, the coin may have been especially welcome as a sample rendering of the bird, and appears to have inspired three other designs of cocks in the collection, Legrain, , Seal Cylinders, 822, 824–826 Google Scholar.

20 Babelon, , Traité II/2, pl. CLXVII, 21ffGoogle Scholar.

21 Babelon, , Traité II/2, pl. CXXXVII, 6 Google Scholar.

22 P. Amandry arrived at the same date for the collection of seal impressions on the basis of the shape of the amphora on the impression Legrain, Seal Cylinders, no. 832 (“Toreutique Achéménide,” Die Antike Kunst II/2 (1959), p. 48, note 88Google Scholar.

23 The evidence here presented may suggest that the theory according to which some of the small groups of Greek coins found in the Near East were jeweller's bullion, was not quite as wrong as it has been made to appear (cf. Schlumberger, D., L'argent grec dans l'empire Achéménide, (1953), p. 17 and no 3Google Scholar). Particular interest pertains in this respect to the “Silversmith's Hoard from Mesopotamia” Iraq XII, 1950, pl. XXIVGoogle Scholar, which contains a bronze ring of the type impressed on the clay sealings of Ur (ibid. 39a, b), though somewhat later in style. Since no relation seems to exist, however, between the ring and the coins of the hoard, E. S. G. Robinson's careful evaluation of the hoard (op. cit., p. 49) as “currency and bullion like the others,” must be accepted.

* UM = University Museum, Philadelphia.