Cylinder Seal

A banded, brown, white-brown and white stone cylinder seal with engraved areas, together with horizontal brown clay impression representing a bearded figure in a tall, horizontally-ridged, crescent-topped, cylindrical head-dress, holding a staff in one hand and raising the other. The male figure rises from a crescent and hovers facing right, before a bearded worshipper, who wears a round, narrow-brimmed hat and raises one hand. Back to back with this figure stands another identical figure, who raises one hand before a couchant long-necked, four-legged creature with a spade on its back. All three figures wear vertically-fringed, double-belted robes. The figures are small in relation to the height of the seal. The coloring of many of the brown bands is milky and concentrated in a fracture.

Cylinder Seal and Modern Impression

Description:
Cylinder seal and modern impression with two worshippers or priests, one before the moon-god Sin in a crescent, and one before the divine symbol of Marduk (spade) on a mušhuššu-dragon altar
Medium:
Dyed sardonyx
Location:
Probably Southern Mesopotamia, Iraq
Dimensions:
H. 2.9 cm; Diam. 1.6 cm
Date:
Neo-Babylonian Period, ca. 700–539 BCE
Inventory Number:
1983,0101.305
Lender:
The British Museum
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