Dual scene: Contest scene depicting royal hero fighting lion/Animal and hybrid creature scene depicting scorpion-tailed bird-man


Dual scene: Contest scene depicting royal hero fighting lion/Animal and hybrid creature scene depicting scorpion-tailed bird-man
Kategória Cylinder Seals
Description of the seal image Royal hero grasps a rampant lion by the neck with one hand and holds a dagger with the other. He wears a dentate crown (cidaris) and a long, double-belted, fringed, open robe over a short tunic. Next to them stands a scorpion-tailed bird-man on a ground line.
Figures, motifs/symbols - ground line
- lion: rampant, clawing at the hero
- royal hero: bearded, wearing a dentate crown (cidaris) and a long, double-belted, fringed, open robe over a short tunic, holding a dagger
- scorpion-tailed bird-man: striding
Subcategory bead cylinder seal
Collection The British Museum
Museum number BM ANE 89832 – 1887-10-8, 2
Condition, shape damaged upper and lower edges; large chip partly distorts the head of the scorpion-tailed bird-man
Culture Achaemenid
Provenance "presented by Major Durand of the Afghan Boundary Commission"
First occurence 1887
Archaeological context N/A
Registration number N/A
Dimensions (mm): height, diameter h: 25; d: 10 (13) (barrel-shaped)
Material and features "Quartz, sardonyx (probably artificially dyed): banded, brown and white. The patchy brown and while-grey colouring of some of the bands and the concentration of brown in several fractures suggests that an agate body (possibly grey to brown and whitish) was engraved and then dyed, using a honey solution so that the induced colouring follows the natural banding of the material (see no. 25; see Chapter VI.1.4 and VI.2.1.6). The barrel shape of the seal is consistent with its having been reworked from a bead (see Chapter VI.4)."
Style modelled
Scene animal, contest, dual
Transliteration

N/A
Translation N/A
Bibliography

Merrillees 2005, 57 no. 24 and pl. X.



Merrillees, P. H.: Catalogue of the Western Asiatic Seals in the British Museum. Cylinder Seals VI: Pre-Achaemenid and Achaemenid Periods. (Catalogue of the Western Asiatic Seals in the British Museum. Cylinder Seals 6) London, 2005.