TWO ROMAN AGATE SEALS, DEPICTING A SPHINX & HENS, CIRCA 1ST-2ND CENTURY A.D.

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TWO ROMAN AGATE SEALS, DEPICTING A SPHINX AND A COCKEREL, CIRCA 1ST-2ND CENTURY A.D. The first of oval form in translucent pale agate, the domed upper face engraved in intaglio with a winged sphinx seated in profile to the right, the forepaws extended and the tail curling upward behind the haunches, the wing raised and finely striated with parallel feathering, the head turned frontally and framed by a low crest or headdress. The second of rounded form in deep carnelian-brown agate with paler banding at the perimeter, engraved in intaglio with a standing cockerel in profile, the body filled with densely worked plumage rendered in fine parallel and curving strokes, the sickle feathers of the tail arched over the back and the wing feathers stepped in overlapping registers. Both intaglios are cut with the drill and wheel techniques standard to Roman glyptic production, the modelling built from short curved gouges for the plumage and longer cuts for the contours. The sphinx follows a type inherited from Hellenistic and earlier Greek glyptic traditions and absorbed into the Roman repertoire as a guardian figure and a mark of watchful discretion appropriate to a sealstone, its role being to close and protect what the seal secured. The cockerel carries a broader set of associations in the Roman world: sacred to Mercury and to Mars, an emblem of vigilance and of the boundary between night and day, and a familiar device on personal seals where its symbolism of alertness and combative spirit spoke to the character the owner wished to project. Agate and its varieties, including the reddish carnelian tones seen here, were the principal materials of Roman personal sealing from the late Republic through the Imperial period. The stone was valued for its hardness, its ability to take a high polish, and its resistance to the wax and clay into which the seal was pressed. Carnelian in particular was imported in quantity from India and from workshops in the eastern Mediterranean, and its warm translucency made it the preferred medium for the finer engraved gems that circulated among the equestrian and senatorial classes, as well as among freedmen and merchants who used seals for daily correspondence and the securing of goods. The domed or rounded form of both stones indicates that they were intended for setting into finger rings, the flat engraved face turned inward against the finger when not in use. Together the two intaglios exemplify the range of imagery available to a Roman seal-user in the first two centuries of the Empire, drawing on the Greek mythological repertoire on the one hand and on the everyday symbolic vocabulary of Roman life on the other. Both are competent workshop productions in the mainstream of Imperial glyptic, and each preserves the intimate, functional character of the Roman engraved gem as a personal device carried on the body and pressed daily into the material of correspondence and trade. Dimensions: Diameter 1: 1.6cm; Length 2: 1.9cm

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