Assemblage and stratigraphy are fundamental concepts for understanding archaeological sites and these ideas bookend the Eastern Mediterranean Gallery. At one end is a mosaic made up of many small pieces of cut stone called tesserae. This object embodies the idea of horizontal proximity, the association or assemblage of objects found together in one context. At the other end of the gallery is an interactive display that engages the visitor in vertical stratigraphy, the layering of soils, architecture, and objects—sequences of contexts—at a site over time.
These principles also help us to understand objects, such as stone seals that were refashioned for new owners. The gallery displays seals of many shapes, sizes, and materials. Seals were closely tied to their owners’ identities because seals were used as a form of signature, by stamping or rolling the object in clay to make one’s mark for legal or administrative purposes. They were also used as amulets (see Hubbard, page 58).
A display about object reuse features recut Late Bronze Age cylinder seals from Kourion, Cyprus, one of which was illustrated in Expedition 64.2. Other seals in the Eastern Mediterranean gallery also have layers of carving. A display about royal greeting gifts includes a reworked cylinder seal found at Beth Shean, Israel. This tiny object is 1.5 cm in height and less than a centimeter in diameter. Its colorful blue stone, lapis lazuli, comes from Afghanistan. Looking closely at this seal shows how it changed as it passed from owner to owner in Mesopotamia, Syria, and the southern Levant.
On the seal and in its modern impression, one can detect two scenes. Two figures are sharply cut with some depth into the stone. Between their backsides is a more shallowly engraved floral design flanked by connected spirals. While this pattern and the figures are now visible together, forming one viewing context, these two scenes were made at two different moments in time.
There are several clues to the object’s use life. First, the more angular figures visibly di er in carving style from the more curvilinear patterns. Second, the part of the seal with the two figures is taller than the portion with the floral and spiral patterns. On that part of the seal, the surface is worn down and the original design is no longer visible, possibly from wear over time but more likely due to purposeful abrasion. Third, the ends of the seal reveal that the hole drilled through the object is o center, positioned more toward the shorter side of the object. To redesign the seal, a carver worked more on the side with the floral and spiral patterns than on the side with the two figures, creating an asymmetry in the object’s shape.
Seen in impression, the two figures are a king with his right arm across his chest facing left and a female goddess, called lama, facing right with her two forearms raised up. These figures are characteristic of Mesopotamian seals known as Old Babylonian. Usually, an inscription appears with these two figures. Likely this original design on the seal was cut in the 18th century BCE. The more shallowly engraved spiral and floral pattern is characteristic of Syrian seal carving. Parallels for parts of the floral and spiral design date as early as the late 18th to 17th century BCE, but its closest parallels are Late Bronze Age, close to the date of the object’s 15th to 14th century BCE find spot at Beth Shean. The spiral and floral pattern forms a new layer in the object’s history. It was carved over and fills the space where the inscription would be expected. Perhaps the inscription meant nothing to the new owner, leading to the seal’s alteration.
The seal’s edges are well worn from handling and the seal must have changed hands several times before its final deposit at Beth Shean between 1470 and 1300 BCE. During its lifetime, it also changed from a seal into a bead, perhaps valued most for its exotic blue color and less for the carvings on the seal. A cylinder seal’s piercing normally allowed the wearer to suspend the seal vertically on a cord, usually attached to the clothing with a toggle pin. Thus, it was on one’s person, but easily accessible for making impressions. Looking at the ends of the seal, however, there is one more clue to the object’s history. The wear on the hole itself is o to one side. This detail shows that someone likely wore this seal horizontally on a necklace at some point. It might still have had value as an amulet, but on a necklace it would have been much harder to use as a sealing tool.