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What do you think of this one?

 








 

 



The impression of the original seal is  shown in Dominique Collon's, First Impressions, p. 169 no. 794. The victim figure is quite different from this one, where the figure seems very sketchy relative to the deity who does not on the published seal, have flames coming from the shoulders.   

But the inscription is meant to be the same.

I stress the word meant, because this seal which has all the attributes of a genuinely ancient cylinder seal is probably a modern fake.

 

The white stone, a translucent chalcedony is not in the usual repertoire of materials Old Babylonian seals but often used in modern fakes because it is attractive, and perhaps easy to work with.

 

On p. 103  Collon does say that  "in some cases it is clear than an untrained person cut the inscription which is garbled..."  so there is some possibility that this is an ancient practice piece. However one would then need to accept that the cutter of the inscription was so illiterate as to make both minor and gross mistakes.  If it is an ancient trial piece by an inexperienced scribe that would be very interesting, and probably unique in having the final example also extant.  But one is  still inclined to say it is a modern forgery of a well known  published seal. 

 



 

Compare the inscriptions.



There are various errors which could arise from trying to copy the inscription without really understanding the nature of cuneiform signs.

The largest blunder is the sal!  sign which is the wrong way up!

This could easily happen from copying not from the seal itself but from the reversed imprint.



This inscriptions  are for the same same individual, (rather ironically a seal cutter!) but with several blunders in the signs. 

First of all, on the original seal the last sign of the first line, (the GAL in the god name Nergal)  is missing; on the fake seal the sign NI has been restored and no Babylonian would make this mistake. 

Similarly, the title ' seal cutter"  is bur-gul, but on this seal the GUL  is written like a SAG, and certainly no ancient profesisonal seal cutter would make this very mistake reflecting on his own professional skill!



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