Guitty Azarpay
Ancient Near Eastern Art Historian
Near Eastern Studies Department
University of California, Berkeley
June 2000
The present project involves the study of a major collection of Sasanian sealstones in the collections of the University of California, at Berkeley, represented by the Edward Gans collection of more than 370 specimens. The sealstones under study are limited to examples produced during the period of the Sasanian empire (AD 224-642) in the ancient Near East. As the last great Iranian monarchy before the Arab conquest of Western Asia, the Sasanian dynasty is best remembered for its distinctive cultural expressions and for the longevity of its more than four centuries of rule. The Sasanian age was a dynamic time of cultural and economic revival, when a new Persian dynasty in southwestern Iran extended its dominion over much of Western and Central Asia, in territories that stretched from Transcaucasia to the Indus. The Sasanian age was also a time of intensified trade and exchange when the Persian empire served as a major gateway to the transcontinental Silk Road that linked the West with China and the Far East.Under the auspices of ECAI, at the University of California, at Berkeley, we have now embarked upon the preparation for the electronic publication of a catalog of these sealstones according to a specific format. Each seal in the present catalog is assigned an Inventory Number that is determined by the subject matter of its carved decoration. The Inventory Number has three components that encode information about the seal's decoration. The three components are an Arabic numeral, a letter from the alphabet, followed by another Arabic numeral. The first numeral identifies large categories or series of motifs or pictorial theme. For example, series 10, 13-16 describe images of humans, series 30, 33-34 treats animals, and series 50 refers to plants. The second component of the Inventory Number, the letter from the alphabet, identifies a specific motif in a given series. The third and last component of the Inventory Number, is another numeral that identifies the motif in greater detail. Thus Inventory Number 10.A.1 identifies a human figure, which is female, and is shown in a standing posture.
The database for the present study contains information not only about the seal's pictorial theme and motifs, but also about its shape, material of manufacture, iconography and inscription. This database has the potential for much creative manipulation of information. We hope that the relative simplicity of the format adopted for the present electronic study will encourage the addition of other, larger collections of such seals to our database. The addition to the present database of other collections would substantially enhance our search for answers to questions about a seal's different functions in the Near East during the period of Late Antiquity. The database might then be tapped for information on differences between stones, shapes, motifs and themes used in private, commercial, administrative and legal transactions. The socio-religious significance of certain specimens could be more fully explored, and the chronology and specific provenance of various categories of seals clarified.