Politics, Religion, and Cylinder Seals

Description

This work seeks to explain some of the patterns of change detected in Mesopotamian cylinder seal iconography and inscriptions by relating them to the political and religious events of the Old Babylonian and Kassite periods. In the past, cylinder seals have been, for the most part, regarded as art objects. Scholars discussed collections of seals, but any attempts at interpreting the symbolism and iconography was inevitably frustrated because they had been divorced from their cultural context. Only in recent years have a few studies begun to treat seals as material objects that actively participated in everyday life. Even now in Mesopotamian archaeology, division exists between history and prehistory. Anthropologically trained archaeologists rarely venture into historical periods and historians and epigraphers are mainly preoccupied with texts. The cognitive-processual approach adopted in this book offers a way for archaeologists to begin working in the historical periods and finally break down this division.