A NEO-ASSYRIAN BANDED AGATE SEAL MESOPOTAMIA, CIRCA 8TH-7TH CENTURY B.C.

拍品描述

A NEO-ASSYRIAN BANDED AGATE SEAL, MESOPOTAMIA, CIRCA 8TH-7TH CENTURY B.C. Of oval form, the domed banded agate stone deeply engraved in intaglio with a devotional scene, now mounted as a finger ring in a plain silver bezel. The composition centres on a striding griffin-demon at the lower register, its avian head crested and beaked, wings raised and rendered with dense cross-hatching to indicate plumage, the hind limbs those of a raptor and the forelegs of a lion, advancing to the right upon a groundline. Before it rises a stepped altar or cult stand surmounted by a tall bundled standard, toward which the creature extends a foreleg in a gesture of adoration. Above, in the field, appear the winged disc and the crescent, the two celestial emblems suspended over the scene. The stone shows the natural banding of the agate in reddish-brown and pale grey striations, the surface with fine scratches consistent with long use, and a small area of loss along the lower edge. The iconography belongs to a well-established repertoire of Neo-Assyrian devotional seal imagery. The griffin-demon, or apkallu in its winged bird-headed form, is one of the tutelary genii of Mesopotamian religion, a benevolent hybrid understood to ward off evil and to mediate between the worshipper and the divine. Here the creature is shown itself in the act of worship, approaching the standard and raising its foreleg toward the divine symbols in the field. The winged disc represents the solar deity Shamash, or in the imperial register the god Ashur, while the crescent above the altar signifies Sin, the moon god of Harran and Ur. The combination of these emblems over an altar with a bundled standard is characteristic of the astral and dynastic piety cultivated at the Neo-Assyrian court from the ninth century onward and disseminated widely on cylinder and stamp seals through the empire's provinces. Banded agate was among the more prestigious materials employed for Neo-Assyrian seals, prized for the visual drama of its natural striations and for the hardness that both resisted wear in daily use and demanded considerable skill from the lapidary. The linear cutting here, executed largely with the drill and the cutting wheel, produces the characteristic sharp, faceted style of the later Neo-Assyrian linear group, in which figures are built up from repeated hatched strokes rather than modelled surfaces. Seals of this type functioned as instruments of personal authority, sealing contracts, letters and containers, and simultaneously as amulets whose imagery invoked divine protection upon the wearer. Their later re-mounting in metal bezels, as here, testifies to their continued value as heirlooms and curiosities long after the fall of Nineveh. This seal exemplifies the mature Neo-Assyrian linear style in its most legible devotional idiom, combining a protective hybrid genius with the principal astral emblems of imperial religion on a piece of finely banded hardstone. It stands as a representative example of the compact theological programmes that Assyrian glyptic artists compressed into the field of a single stamp seal. Dimensions: Length: 3.4 cm

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