Cylinder Seal

CBS Register: cylinder seal. lapis: Nin-tur-nin dam. Mes-an-ni-pad-da. Two registers. Gilgamesh and rampant animals.

UE II: Cylinder seal, lapis-lazuli. two registers: above, hunter fighting with lions, and the inscription nin-TUR nin; below, a hunter with animals. This seal of the wife of Mes-anni-padda, first king of the 1st Dynasty of Ur, was found loose in the soil at a depth of 1.40m from the modern surface; ie on the level of the higher Sargonid graves and in or a little above the stratum of 1st Dynasty rubbish which covers the older cemetery. In any case it had probably been disturbed by the Sargonid grave-diggers, and it could not be determined whether it originally belonged to a grave of which no trace remains or to the 1st Dynasty rubbish stratum in which were found, in another part of the cemeterty, seal-impressions of her and of her husband's seals. The latter is far more probable, as there is no evidence here of 1st Dynasty graves, much less of 1st Dynasty royal graves.

Woolley was very lucky to find this seal in the loose soil above the royal tombs because through its inscription, Ninbanda, the wife of Mesannepada, we have a historical record of the first queen of the First Dynasty of Ur. It is interesting that the imagery of Ninbanda’s seal is also a combat scene, like that of her husband (seen impressed on sealing 31-16-677), but of a very different style. Ninbanda’s seal, cut from lapis lazuli, is a double-register composition. The lower register shows a five-combatant composition typical of the Royal Cemetery period, but in the upper register the composition has changed. Here the hero is in the middle, protecting two rampant bovids who are being attacked from each side by lions. The sense of a decorative band is still present, but the figures do not overlap. The quality of the carving on this seal is not as fine as on that of her husband, Mesannepada.