NEO-ASSYRIAN / ACHAEMENID STONE CYLINDER SEAL
Ca. 8th-5th century BC or later.
A beautifully stone-carved cylinder seal engraved with divine hero mastering dragons. A large bird (ibex?) and multiple astral images (6-poined star, lunar crescent, five dots as stars) and other motifs (Marduk-spade, rhomboid, etc.) are found in the exergue. Cylindrical seals are objects with an engraved pattern, which was moved over a damp clay, thus obtaining a reflection in the form of a repeating pattern. It was mostly used to mark ownership but may also have had a magical function. They were used in Mesopotamia and other parts of the Middle East from the fourth to the first millennium BC. Studied by PD Dr. habil. Pieter Gert van der Veen, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz.
Size: L:34.5mm / W:17.4mm ; 19.45g
Provenance: Private London collection of an Ancient Art dealer; Formerly in a central London family collections 1990s; Suggested to be examined by Professor Wilfrid George Lambert FBA (1926-2011), historian, archaeologist, and specialist in Assyriology and Near Eastern archaeology, in the late 1980s and early 1990s.;
Estimate: GBP 150 - 300