"Cylinder seals for the lower classes". Ein Merkmal der Provinzkultur des ausgehenden Alten Reiches?

Egyptologists have paid much attention toinscribed administrative seals and their impressions. Bycontrast, the so-called figure seals, which render no orhardly any text, but instead use icons and signs inspiredon hieroglyphs which however yield no coherent sense,have received far less attention. Usually this material isrelated to the lower strata of society. According to currentinterpretations, it is rooted in the Egyptian culture of thelater Old Kingdom and First Intermediate Period. Thephenomenon would be a corollary of the decreasing prominenceof central state authority in this era. Proceedingfrom a number of recent early Old Kingdom finds fromal-Shaykh Saʽīd/Wādī Zabaydā, the present article arguesthat a) figure seals were continually in use from the latePredynastic until the late Old Kingdom and b) differentfrom what is commonly assumed, stamp seals were inexistence long before the late Old Kingdom. The articlechallenges the relationship between these object categoriesand developments specifically in late Old KingdomEgypt.

Publication year:2018