Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

Worshiper before stylus on altar and lamp on stand

between 600 and 400 B.C.
yellowish chalcedony ;
Morgan Seal 798
Description
1 stamp seal : yellowish chalcedony ; 26 x 12.5 x 20.5 mm
Provenance
Acquired by Pierpont Morgan sometime between 1885 and 1908.
Notes
"...795-811 have been classed as Neo-Babylonian, because many seal impressions of corresponding style and subject have been found on Neo-Babylonian tablets of the sixth and fifth centuries B.C. In these impressions a relatively uniform style perists, though the dates of most of the tablets reach well into Persian times (for example, Philadelphia 965-969), and Persian seal impressions also appear on them... A large number of Neo-Babylonian stamps executed with careful modeling present a subject found also in the ritual scenes of modeled-style cylinders of the sixth and fifth centuries B.C., namely, a worshiper standing before symbols (795a, 796-798)... A lamp, symbol of the god of fire, Nusku, is also frequently found; it is usually placed not on an altar but on a distinctive stand, generally ending in bull feet (795, 796, 798)."--Porada, CANES, p. 96-98
Pyramidal seal with rounded top and slightly convex octagonal base.
Summary
Worshiper before stylus on altar and lamp on stand; behind worshiper, cross-shaped object topped by globe -- Crescent in sky.
Classification
Department