Syro-Palestinian stamp seals from the Persian Period (538-332 B.C.): an analysis of their iconographic motifs and inscriptions

[摘要] In the course of this M.A. thesis, 65 stamp seals (conoids, scaraboids, signet rings andscarabs) have been collected, described, and analyzed. They stem from legal archaeologicalexcavations in Syro-Palestine, and have been found in strata and contexts which can clearly beascribed to the Persian period.Methodological questions were addressed, including the following: historical outline of thePersian period, geographical limitations of the study, archaeological considerations, and theiconographic and epigraphic aspects of the study.For the description process, a computerized system was developed, by means of which theseals could be described on three levels: general description, element description, modificationdescription. In this way, a uniform way of handling the data was achieved. The descriptionprocedure is reflected in the fonn of a catalogue.In order to facilitate the analysis, the seal corpus was organized in three, at times overlapping,classes: iconographic seals, epigraphic seals, and hieroglyphic seals. The different classes werethen analyzed according to their peculiarities, e.g. geographical distribution, iconographicmotif groups, palaeography, onomastica, etc.It was shown that the corpus of stamp seals from the Persian period consists of a wide varietyof objects in tenns of form and content, and could by no means be characterized as beinghomogenous. A certain relationship between geographical origin, fonn, and content of the sealcould be established.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University