Heirloom cylinder seals at Mleiha (Sharjah Emirate, UAE)

Abstract

Very few cylinder seals are reported from South‐East Arabia. This paper reports on two cylinder seals that were found as heirlooms at Mleiha, UAE. The first is a Neo‐Assyrian seal with a ritual scene: kneeling worshippers around a tree of life. The second is a seal of local manufacture. The positioning of its image, a human figure holding an Arabian horned viper, is turned 90°, questioning whether it was ever used as a seal or rather worn as an amulet or bead. Local seal production and seal use are discussed. Seals from the Iron Age II suggest that the object is of local production, as does the iconography that can be linked to Iron Age snake cults in South‐East Arabia. Comparable snake representations are, however, occasionally still found in the Mleiha/PIR period.

Full text

Received: 4 April 2023
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Revised: 14 May 2023
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Accepted: 17 May 2023
DOI: 10.1111/aae.12233
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Heirloom cylinder seals at Mleiha (Sharjah Emirate, UAE)
Bruno Overlaet
1
|Sabah Jasim
2
|Eisa Yousif
2
1
Royal Museums of Art and History, Federaal
Wetenschapsbeleid, Brussels, Belgium
2
Sharjah Archaeology Authority, Government
of Sharjah, Sharjah, UAE
Correspondence
Bruno Overlaet, Royal Museums of Art and
History, Brussels, Belgium.
Email: Bruno.Overlaet@Gmail.com
Abstract
Very few cylinder seals are reported from South‐East Arabia. This paper
reports on two cylinder seals that were found as heirlooms at Mleiha, UAE.
The first is a Neo‐Assyrian seal with a ritual scene: kneeling worshippers
around a tree of life. The second is a seal of local manufacture. The
positioning of its image, a human figure holding an Arabian horned viper, is
turned 90°, questioning whether it was ever used as a seal or rather worn as an
amulet or bead. Local seal production and seal use are discussed. Seals from
the Iron Age II suggest that the object is of local production, as does the
iconography that can be linked to Iron Age snake cults in South‐East Arabia.
Comparable snake representations are, however, occasionally still found in the
Mleiha/PIR period.
KEYWORDS
Cylinder seal, Iron Age, Mleiha, Neo‐Assyrian, Southeast Arabia, snake cult
1|INTRODUCTION
Despite the intense trade contacts between Iran, Meso-
potamia, and Arabia, cylinder seals never found wide use
in Arabia. In his 2010 survey of cylinder seals and their
use in the Arabian Peninsula, Potts lists 114 seals, but
these are overwhelmingly from the northern parts of the
gulf and the islands where a strong Mesopotamian
presence is documented. Merely 14 derived from South‐
East Arabia: 11 from the UAE and 3 from the Sultanate
of Oman (Potts, 2010, nrs 94 and 112 are identical).
Some 18 more have since been reported,
1
which raises the
total to 32 documented cylinder seals for a period dating
from the Late Uruk (Pittman & Potts, 2009) to the Iron
Age. The recent discovery of two more cylinder seals at
Mleiha, a third century BCE to early third century CE
context, is, therefore, all the more remarkable. One of
these is a familiar type of neo‐Assyrian seal, seemingly an
import from Mesopotamia; the other appears, however,
to be a local Iron Age artefact.
2|NEO‐ASSYRIAN CYLINDER
SEAL WITH RITUAL IN FRONT OF
A TREE OF LIFE (INV. SAA 84J)
Beige limestone: remaining H. 24.4 mm; Diam. Seal
19 mm, Perforation diam. 2.7 mm.
The lower half of a large cylinder seal was found in
the surface layers of MLH‐10, a rectangular, densely
built walled area between ‘Mleiha fort CW’and ‘Palace
H’(MLH‐08) where excavations are ongoing. These will
have to determine the nature of this area.
The seal fragment depicts a table and kneeling
worshippers flanking a stylised tree of life, a familiar
scene from the Neo‐Assyrian realm. An antithetical
composition of kneeling or standing winged genii, bulls,
kings or courtiers centred around a tree of life, often
surmounted by a winged sun disc, is a common theme in
Neo‐Assyrian art and occurs on wall reliefs, furniture
fittings, garments, jewellery, seals and so on
Arab. Arch. Epig. 2023;34:102–110.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/aae102
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© 2023 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
1
The following seals complete the list of cylinder seals in the Oman Peninsula
provided by Potts (2010): Tell Abraq (1 stone seal, IA/Magee et al., 2015, pp.
26–28, fig. 36; Cordoba, 2016, p. 62, nr. 54); Rumeilah (2 stone seals, IA,
fig. 4/Lombard, 1998, pp. 156–160, fig. 1, nr 10–11); Saruq al‐Hadid (3 stone and 2
frit or faience seals, LB & IA/Boraik Radwan Karim et al., 2017; David‐Cuny
et al., 2018); Qidfa 1 (1 frit or faience seal, LB‐IA, fig. 5/al‐Tikriti, 2022, pp.
68–69, fig. 208, Pl. 113. Note that figure 211 was already listed in Potts, 2010,as
nrs 94 and 112); Dibba al‐Bayah (1 frit or faience seal + 2 local stone seals,
IA/Frenez et al., 2021, pp. 113–115, fig. 6; stone cylinder seals DA42343 and
DA43512, Genchi, 2022, timestamp 30:17); Salut (2 stone seals, IA, fig. 4/Degli‐
Esposti, 2014); and Adam‐Mudhmar (1 frit or faience and 1 stone seal, EIA/
Gernez & Jean, 2017, p. 11, figs. 9–10; Gernez & Giraud, 2017, pp. 76–77,
fig. 6.35). Some recent finds remain unpublished: 2 seals found near al‐Rustaq and
2 seals at Tell Abraq (personal communications).