Hellenistic Sealings and Archives
Author: Branko Fredde van Oppen de Ruiter
Publisher:
Published: 2021-08-04
Total Pages: 370
ISBN-13: 9782503591278
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAncient seal impressions once employed to seal a variety of objects, particularly different kinds of documents, offer a wealth of information not only about iconography, but also about the dissemination of ideas and beliefs. Their use provides evidence about the continuation, transformation, and mutual influences effecting local traditions, and casts light on administrative and bureaucratic practices. This volume brings together conference papers by twelve specialists focusing on the Hellenistic period (c. 325-25 BCE), a period still deserving of more scholarly attention. The hoards discussed by the various authors include those from Delos, Doliche, Edfu, Kedesh, Pistiros, Seleucia-on-the-Tigris, Selinunte and Uruk. The volume's themes range from the persistence of pharaonic imagery on Ptolemaic sealings and Greek influence on Sicilian seals to the survival of Mesopotamian traditions on Parthian clay tablets and the use of Hellenistic iconography on Bactrian finger rings. Ptolemaic and Seleucid seal impressions especially offer clues for identifying royal portraits in other media. The papers contextualize the subject within related fields of glyptics and numismatics, and in so doing elucidate day-to-day realities of social, public and private archival practices beyond political and elite levels of life. This publication-the first of its kind in twenty-five years-illuminates aspects of Hellenistic history that have long remained abstruse, ignored or inaccessible without the aid of seal impressions.
