AN ACHAEMENID BANDED AGATE SEAL CIRCA 5TH CENTURY B.C.

拍品描述

AN ACHAEMENID BANDED AGATE SEAL, PERSIA, CIRCA 5TH CENTURY B.C. Of oval form, the domed banded agate stone engraved in intaglio with a striding winged bull, shown in profile facing left, its body powerfully modelled with a broad chest, arched wing rising above the shoulder, and long tail curling behind. The head is crowned with a stepped crenellated headdress in the form of a mural crown or polos. The musculature and joints are articulated by rows of small drilled pellets running along the flanks and legs, a device characteristic of the drill-and-burin technique of Achaemenid glyptic. Around the field, arranged along the upper and lateral edges, is a series of engraved signs, apparently a legend flanking the creature. The subject is the winged bull, one of the central protective creatures of the Achaemenid visual repertoire and cognate with the great human-headed bulls, or lamassu, that guarded the palace gateways at Persepolis, Susa and Pasargadae. In its scaled-down form on a personal seal, the figure carried the same apotropaic function, invoking royal authority and the guardianship of the throne for the seal's owner. The crenellated headdress, echoing the tiered walls of a fortified city, associates the creature further with kingship and with the tutelary spirits of place. The pelleted articulation of the body, sometimes described as the "globular" or "beaded" style, is a hallmark of Court Style seal-cutting under the later Achaemenids. Banded agate was among the preferred hardstones of Achaemenid seal-workshops, favoured for its translucency, its resistance to chipping under the wheel, and the way its natural banding animated an impression when the stone was rolled or pressed into wet clay. Such stones were often sourced from long-distance trade with the eastern satrapies and beyond, and their working required specialist lapidary skill of a kind concentrated in the royal and satrapal centres. A seal of this material and quality would have belonged to a figure of administrative or courtly rank, used to authenticate documents, seal storerooms, or mark property within the imperial bureaucracy that stretched from Asia Minor to the Indus. The oval pierced form indicates that the stone was originally mounted as a ring bezel or worn threaded on a cord or metal wire, in the manner familiar from surviving Achaemenid ring-stones and from the seal impressions preserved on the Persepolis Fortification and Treasury tablets. Personal seals of this kind were at once instruments of office, marks of identity, and amulets, their imagery chosen to affirm the standing and the protection of the bearer. This seal exemplifies the Achaemenid Court Style in miniature: the disciplined profile composition, the heraldic winged guardian drawn from the vocabulary of palace sculpture, and the pelleted modelling that translated monumental relief into the scale of the hand. It stands within the small corpus of hardstone seals that carried the iconography of empire into the private sphere of administration. Dimensions: Length: 2.5cm

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