Page 45 - The Art & Architecture of the Ancient Orient_Neat

PART ONE: MESOPOTAMIA
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Figure 7. Seal impressions of the Protolitcratc period

hollow out the main mass of the figure. In earlier times this procedure had left no trace.
But in plate 8b the round holes which had served to block out the subject were not
properly obliterated by subsequent work with the graver. The designs executed with
this implement alone became careless scratchings, and sometimes drill-holes and lines
make up some sort of pattern which can neither be called decorative nor recognized as a
subject. A new type of thin, tall cylinder, with purely geometric arrangements, was
introduced in the course of the period, but soon became involved in the general decline
in seal cutting. The seals of the latter half of the period have only an archaeological in­
terest and need not, therefore, detain us here.
The earlier seals, on the other hand, are carefully incised gems. If a single scene is re­
presented, it is drawn clearly and vividly, and in the balanced friezes the greatest inven­
tiveness is shown.44 The subjects are very varied. The ‘king on the battlefield’ (Figure
7a) and the scene of a herdsman defending a calving cow against a Hon,45 are, we pre­
sume, secular subjects. But the majority of the designs reflect the same religious pre­
occupations as the other works of the period. One seal shows in an abridged form the
upper register of the vase of plate 3, a and b.46 In another (Plate 8d) the girdle which is
presented to the goddess on that vase is carried by the third of the three men approaching
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