between 700 B.C. and 501 B.C.
milky chalcedony
23.5 x 10 mm
Morgan Seal 735
Provenance:
Acquired by Pierpont Morgan sometime between 1885 and 1908.
Notes:
"Most of the seals of this style [cut-style]... date from the first millennium. They can be divided into an earlier group, dated approximately in the ninth or eighth century B.C. (724-733), and a later, belonging probably to the seventh and sixth centuries (734-746)... Seals 734-739 show the influence of the modeled style that prevailed in both regions in the latter part of the eighth century B.C. ... Among the seals depicting contests, 735 presents the favorite scheme of Assyrian seal cutters from the time of Sargon onward--a hero with two monsters or animals."--Porada, CANES, p. 88
Summary:
Hero grasping two sphinxes -- Crescent in upper field, fish and rhomb in lower -- Terminal: winged sun disk.
Place:
Southern Mesopotamia.
Period:
Catalog link:
Classification:
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