A LATE URUK/JEMDET NASR BLACK STONE STAMP SEAL 3300-2900 B.C.

拍品描述

A LATE URUK/JEMDET NASR BLACK STONE STAMP SEAL IN THE FORM OF A COUCHANT ANIMAL, MESOPOTAMIA, CIRCA 3300-2900 B.C. Of compact ovoid form, carved in the round from a densely worked black stone worn to a soft sheen, the seal takes the shape of a recumbent quadruped with legs folded beneath the body. The head is summarily modelled, with large drilled circular eyes and a further drilled circle marking the muzzle, the mouth indicated by a shallow incised line curving beneath the jaw. Along the flanks, shallow curved grooves separate the folded forelegs and hindlegs from the rounded torso, and a further groove runs across the rear to describe the haunches. The underside, not visible in the present view, would carry the intaglio design that constitutes the working face of the seal. Animal-form stamp seals of this kind belong to the earliest sustained tradition of glyptic administration in southern Mesopotamia, developing in the Late Uruk phase and continuing through the Jemdet Nasr period. The animal is rendered with the pared-back geometry characteristic of the period, in which volumes are reduced to their essential curves and the identifying features, ears, eyes, folded limbs, are picked out with minimal drilled and incised marks. The type most often depicts recumbent bovines, sheep, or hares, animals central to the temple economies whose accounts these seals were used to secure. The choice of a hard, dark stone is functional as well as aesthetic. Seals of this class were pressed repeatedly into wet clay to close jars, sacks, doors, and tablets, and the material had to resist chipping and abrasion across a long working life. Dark, fine-grained stones, including varieties of steatite, chlorite, and serpentinite, were preferred for this reason, and their sombre polish contrasts with the pale clay impressions they were made to produce. The animal form itself was more than decorative: the seal was worn or carried by its owner, and its zoomorphic body served as both handle and identifying token, the creature standing for the office or household whose authority the impression conveyed. The Late Uruk and Jemdet Nasr periods witnessed the consolidation of the administrative apparatus that accompanied the earliest cities of southern Iraq, and the stamp seal, alongside the newly developed cylinder seal, was among its principal instruments. Small animal-form seals such as the present example were produced across the alluvial plain and its northern peripheries, and examples have been recovered from temple and domestic contexts alike, testifying to the reach of sealed accounting well beyond the palace. This seal exemplifies the reductive animal sculpture of the Late Uruk and Jemdet Nasr glyptic tradition, in which the demands of function, a stone dense enough to seal clay thousands of times, and the conventions of early Mesopotamian animal representation are resolved in a single compact object. It belongs to a formative moment in the history of administration, when the identifying mark of an individual or institution was first given the shape of a living creature. Dimensions: Length: 4.5cm

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