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    • Fake cylinder seals section 3, page 2
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            • Fake cylinder seals, section 3, page 6
  • Fake cylinder seals section 4
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Someone sent me these photos and asked about this cylinder seal.

Although the seal looks fairly convincingly worn is it genuine?

It appears to be an Old Babylonian, Kassite Period seal.

It has 6 lines of cuneiform which can be read, ending with the personal name of the owner,

(the column line on the left) 'Sha-ilimma-damqa'

This is a seven line prayer to Shamash, 'King of Heaven and earth' and naming the owner of the seal as 'Sha-ilimma-damqa', who, from another seal we know to be  the son of 'Lugal-Mansi'. Both the son and grandson of Sha-ilimma-damqa held high office under the Kassite King Burna-Buriash II (1359BC-1333BC) and their seals are also known.

This inscription translates into: (there are actually several slightly different variations of the translation)

Shamash, king of heaven and earth,
superb, luminous,
resplendent with rays,
who always leads
his worshipper safely:
Sha-ilimma-damqa,

The inscription here has been poorly copied from  a well known seal in the British Museum, ref: BM 89128 which has the same 6 lines for the owner 'Sha-ilimma-damqa' with the  addition of his father's name as 'son of Lugal-mansum' (or 'Lugal-mansi') - line 7.

This seal is one of four seals known to have survived, belonging to these three generations of the same family.

See pagesd 58-61 in 'First Impresions: Cylinder seals in the ancient Near East'

by Dominique Collon

We can make a reasonable guess about how the faker got his ideas for the inscription and motifs - the faker was looking at photos of seals in this book when making his fake!

See  this pair of caprids on the fake seal?

Aha!

Copied from this seal.

Right next to the one he was copying the inscription from!

So, the fact that the inscription and several of the motifs on the fake seal appear together on  just two adjacent pages of Dominique Collon's book rather suggests that the faker had the book in front of him when making this fake.

And on the next page

Altogether………

I know of another definitely fake  seal with the identical inscription though different scene.

This one also has the  7^th line giving the father's name (rather poorly written).

There are problems with how some of the signs are written (errors)  in both fake seals.

Well made fake cylinder seals are often copied from well known examples shown in various books.

The seal BM81928 was first published by Van Buren in 1954 and appears in several other books.

Interestingly, this seal looks quite worn and one would have thought at first sight that it was ancient.
However it is quite common for fake seals to be fairly convincingly made to look ancient.

More fakes and forgeries of cylinder seals>>>>