Winner of the 2021 Max Le Petit and Gwenyth Jones Nicholson Collection Prize – News – The University of Sydney

The process of manufacturing seals in ancient times seems to have been left to a select group of artisans. In Ur, for example, lapidaries or stone carvers were identified on a tablet and depicted working together with other artisans, crafting stone works, leather, wood, ropes, reed, and metal.

In earlier periods, such as the Ubaid period and up to the middle of the third millennium, as technology was still limited, craftsmen worked with softer stones like chlorite, steatite, serpentine, marble, limestone, and alabaster since these materials could be more easily manipulated and crafted into seals.

In contrast, stamp seals were often manufactured using onyx, porphyry, carnelian, sard, banded agate, and crystal quartz. As technologies were developed and evolved so too did seal design and since seal carving was idiosyncratic from one region and period to another, the seals can be precisely dated. Yet as southern Mesopotamia was largely an alluvial plain, stones for seals and cylinder seal production had to be imported. Iran is considered a likely source which also further demonstrates the extent of trade and commerce that had developed throughout Uruk and Mesopotamia.

As commerce and trade grew throughout the region, no doubt the need for more complex administrative controls also began to evolve in-situ. Simple stamp seals were no longer good enough. Cylinder seals provided administrators and craftsmen the ability to include both more information and an ability to develop a highly utilitarian tool for marking and sealing a larger surface. Unlike its relative the stamp seal, the cylinder seal, because of its larger surface area could support an unending narrative. Cylinder seals could be used for a variety of administrative controls, this shape made it possible to easily cover irregular surfaces with the images carved on the seal.

The Chau Chak Wing seal was carved in calcite, a material which may have come from Iraq or the southern Levant where ancient calcite quarries have been discovered and analysed such as at Teomim and the Abud Caves. Thus, further demonstrating expanding trade or even plundering throughout the region and during the period as new rulers looked to assert their divine rights and control over ancient lands.

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Winner of the 2021 Max Le Petit and Gwenyth Jones Nicholson Collection Prize - News - The University of Sydney