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.

Spade and stylus on altar

between 600 and 400 B.C.
blue chalcedony ;
Morgan Seal 799
Description
1 stamp seal : blue chalcedony ; 21.5 x 15.5 x 12.5 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)... The symbols most often used are the stylus of Nabu and the spade of Marduk... Cuneiform inscriptions sometimes occur, as on one side of 795 and in 799."--Porada, CANES, p. 96-98
Conical seal with rounded top and oval base.
Summary
Spade and stylus on altar, inscription.
Classification
Department