Jamdat Nasr Stamp Seal | Lion Attacking Ibex, Steatite

Ancient Near East, Jamdat Nasr period, ca. 3000–1000 BCE. A lion lunges across the face of this domed black steatite stamp seal, jaws open at the throat of a long-horned ibex whose body doubles back beneath it. Drilled pellets scatter through the field as filler, and the whole composition is cut in confident curving grooves that read cleanly in impression. The convex back, shaped like a turtle shell, carries an incised herringbone pattern radiating from a central axis, and a biconical hole bored through the body allowed the seal to hang from a cord at the wrist or neck. Such seals authenticated goods and sealings of clay, pressed into stoppers and door fastenings, and the predation motif belongs to a long Mesopotamian visual vocabulary of animal combat. Size: 1.75" Diam x 1.5" H (4.4 cm Diam x 3.8 cm H).

Stamp seals with high domed or "turtleback" profiles and pierced bodies are among the earliest instruments of administrative control in the ancient Near East, predating the widespread adoption of the cylinder seal and continuing alongside it in provincial and peripheral workshops. Their owners used them to secure commodities: soft clay was pressed over jar mouths, basket lids, and door bolts, then stamped, so that any tampering destroyed the mark.

The lion-and-ibex encounter is one of the oldest and most durable motifs in Mesopotamian and Persian glyptic. Predator and prey locked together express, at minimum, the wild world outside the settlement, and in later periods the pairing accrues royal and cosmological readings. Here the carver has compressed both animals into a circular field, bending the ibex's horns to follow the border and filling the voids with drill-point pellets, a shorthand common to steatite seal workshops working at speed.

Provenance: Private NYC. collection, acquired from Henry Anavian, Sumer Gallery, NYC., 1980’s.

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Item #

73275

Condition
Intact, Excellent condition.

Buyer's Premium
30%