Old Syrian Popular Style Cylinder Seals, Inspiration, Interaction, Creation and Ownership
Near Eastern, Old Syrian Popular Style cylinder seals and the relationship between the literate seal carver and an illiterate or semi-literate owner. Seal carvers were highly specialized literate artisans who acted as the graphic designers of the ancient world.
I would like to navigate the process for how and why a Near Eastern, Old Syrian Popular Style cylinder seal resulted in being intensely personal to an owner. Yes, there is value placed on the material, and quality of workmanship for these seals or any other material piece of antiquity, but for me there is just as great a value in the story behind how and why these Near Eastern, Old Syrian Popular Style cylinder seal were able to be created so personalized!
In the Middle Bronze Age, the Old Syrian Popular Style catered to a much wider demographic than the elite, royal seals of Mesopotamia. Customers included local merchants, lower-level administrators, and estate owners. A customer likely could not read cuneiform script, as they possessed high degree of visual literacy, but they knew exactly what a storm god looked like, what a protective sphinx meant, and what animals brought good luck.
Many of the elite's Near Eastern cylinder seals had cuneiform inscriptions added later. For a custom order, a professional scribe might write out the owner's name and a prayer, which the carver then copied onto the stone. For the "Popular Style," however, inscriptions were rare, "the imagery was the text".
The customer would explain why they needed the seal. Maybe they are traveling into dangerous territory for trade, so the carver adds an ankh for life and an ibex for wild protection. Perhaps they are devoted to a specific local god so, the carver would place that deity at the center. Environmental and spiritual influences show why specific animals or protective symbols appear. These are generally understood to have served as an evil averting function, protecting the owner from harm or sealing a legal contract under divine witness.
There were many popular motifs carved into these Old Syrian Popular Style cylinder seals that include a verity of standing figures with and without animals, temple and religious ceremonies, hunting, warfare, demons and monsters, but because cylinder seals were used to sign legal documents, no two seals could actually be identical. If two people had the exact same seal, fraud would be effortless. Carvers created uniqueness through distinct idiosyncrasies.
The main scene might look like ten others in the city, but the carver would fill the blank space behind the main figures with unique idiosyncrasies that included a combination of "filler motifs". These might include miniature monkeys, birds, human heads, or geometric stars.
Old Syrian Popular Style seals were often made quickly using a bow drill and a cutting wheel. The specific deepness of a drill hole, the tilt of a line, or a slight error became a unique idiosyncrasy or fingerprint.
The choice of stone, hematite, magnetite, or faience paired with custom metal caps on the ends of the cylinder made the physical object immediately recognizable to the eye before it was even rolled on clay.
When an individual looked at a seal, they did not just see "a god standing." They saw "the god standing next to a bird and a small star," and they knew instantly that it belonged to you.