Cylinder-seal from the hegemonic period neo-Assyrian,1100-612 B.C.
Characters: a four-winged’s female goddess, perhaps Ishtar, accompanied by two sphinxes.
Top: a moon, a fish, two bowls or asters, a winged sun, two fishes and the monogram of Philhelm
Middle: the moving moon or an aster?
Bottom: an unidentified orange symbol, a green comet, a blue rhomb or an eye and a dog.
The colours of the background symbolized the superposed vault of heaven.
The cuneiform text is an incantation of Nabu, son of Marduk, main Babylonian god.
The original cut of the signs has been modified and the literal translation would be :
“ Let him, he, who believes in you, not ashamed himself.
Nabu, let him follow you, give him the taste of wealth and longevity. “
Cylinder-seal: it’s a little cylindrical piece, sculpted with various patterns in some materials which could be a stone: marble, serpentine, hematite, lapis-lazuli,…sometimes even metal such as gold, silver or bronze, earthenware and glass. Its diameter is about one thumb, sometimes smaller but rarely bigger! It’s a cylinder, so basically you can unroll it on clay tablets which can form friezes, extensible to the infinity. The object was often pierced at the vertical, thanks to a small cord; you could carry it around your neck. Seals were very small and the stand pretty strong so the sculptor’s skills were obvious and required them to practice a lot before becoming masters in this Art. The cylinder-seal were used for economics functions of identification and control of the owner. According the epoch, the pattern was often a little scene with or without genuine inscriptions and themes.
The first seals appeared more than 6000 years in Uruk, Mesopotamia.
Ishtar : for Babylonians or Inanna for Sumerians sometimes considered as the daughter of the God of rain. Each New Year, the sovereign was supposed to marry one of the priestess of Inanna in order to insure the fertility of lands and the fecundity of females. This rite, called the holy marriage became generalized at the end of the third millenary.
Nabu : starting for the second millenary, Nabu, treated as the son of Marduk, main Babylonian’s god, became the god of Scripture, scribes and wisdom. His protector’s genius was Dragon-Snake and his symbols: tools of scribes: a quill (Calamus) for writing and a clay plate as a board.