Percy E. Newberry

“ Doubtless in the earliest times only the most powerful persons possessed seals, but as civilization advanced the officers of the administration came to use, besides their own personal seals, official ones for government purposes. Thus it was that the seal, being the real instrument of the power and authority of an office, came to be used as the symbol of it, and the delivery of an official or State seal to an individual, gave to that individual the authority and power to execute the rights and duties of his office. ”

“ The importance attached to the seal at present in the East is so great, that without one no document is regarded as authentic.
25From the use for authenticating documents, the seal came to be employed for another purpose—that of authenticating the purity or weight of a piece of gold or other metal; the stamp upon the coin being the government guarantee of the fineness and weight of the piece of metal. It has often been supposed that the specimens of the scarab class of Egyptian seals were used as tokens of value, that they represented the small change of the Pharaohs. ”

“ In ancient times, whenever a man left his home he always sealed up such parts as contained stores or other valuable property, so that they might be rendered secure from the attacks of thieves or slaves. In like manner boxes containing clothes or personal ornaments, and jars containing wine or oils, were kept under seal. The words meaning “to close” and “to seal” were in Egyptian [2] synonymous; indeed, to place a thing “under seal” was an ancient expression equivalent to the modern one of keeping a thing “under lock and key.” ”

“ To secure property from theft was, however, only one of the many uses of the seal; it was employed in other equally important ways. In Western countries, where writing has now become a universal accomplishment, a person’s written signature is sufficient to give authority to a document, but in ancient 6times a seal or signet was a necessity to anyone possessed of even the smallest amount of property, for without it no legal or other writing could be attested. Herodotus (I, 195) mentions that everyone in Babylonia carried a seal, and the same remark would apply with equal truth to Egypt. ”

“ It is very difficult for us, especially for those of us who are not familiar with Eastern civilization, to realize the great importance that was attached to the seal by the peoples of the Ancient World. ”

“ At the present day we often carry our seals on our watch chains, or we wear our signets as rings on our fingers, but we cannot rightly say that these articles were made solely for the adornment of the person.
These are the principal theories regarding the use and signification of the Egyptian scarab which have been set forth in works hitherto published on the subject, but archaeologists are beginning to abandon these views in favour of another and a simpler one, that has not as yet been discussed at length, but that recognizes in these little objects nothing more than a simple seal or signet. ”

“ But as these markings or devices would have had little weight with a determined thief, we can hardly doubt that, in Babylonia at any rate, they became early imbued with a magical signification: so that their real power would be moral rather than physical. The reasoning of the lawyers of the Middle Ages regarding the sealing of contracts was that a seal attracts and excites caution in illiterate persons, and thereby operates as a security against fraud. ”

“ The soil of Egypt literally teems with them. Thousands have been found among the débris of long deserted and ruined towns and temples; the fellah often turns them up in the soil whilst ploughing his fields, and rich harvests of these little objects have been gathered by the antiquary from the myriad tombs that line the desert edge on both sides of the Nile from Alexandria and El Arîsh to Aswân. Outside the boundaries of the Nile Valley also, Egyptian seals are frequently discovered ”

“ In ancient times, however, the document was rolled up and tied with a piece of string, the knot of which was covered with a pellet of clay and sealed. It was not only in Egypt that this was so, but in all countries of the ancient world; in Babylonia and Assyria as well as in Greece and Italy. A written signature would have been of no avail to attest a document; a seal had always to be used. ”

“ To them we owe most of our information regarding the earliest dynasties. For much of our knowledge of the period intervening between the end of the Twelfth and the beginning of the Eighteenth Dynasties we are also indebted to the same class of monument, while small scarab-shaped seals are as yet the only extant evidence of several of the Hyksos kings. ”

“ To make a good and continuous sealing with an unmounted cylinder is not, however, an easy matter, and consequently we find that this class of seal was often mounted by inserting a rod of metal through its aperture, the ends of which rod projected from the cylinder, so that it could be easily held by the forefinger and thumb, while the rod, serving as an axle, enabled the operator to keep the seal in place, and at the same time to preserve an even pressure whilst rolling it over the clay. ”

“ A CYLINDER SEAL
BEARING THE NAME
OF MERŶ RA.
(In the collection of Mr. Piers.)
Varieties of shape and perforation. The earliest examples that are at present known are of a peculiarly short thick type, with a narrow hole running through them (fig. 20) ; they are almost identical in shape with the Chaldean and early Babylonian cylinder seals, and consequently may be thought to indicate a connection at a very remote period between the civilizations of Western Asia and Egypt—a connection which is still more apparent when we come to consider the subjects engraved on many of the seals themselves. ”

“ In the earlier periods of Egyptian history this Royal Signet was, doubtless, either worn by the monarch himself or carried in some secure way about his person. We do not read in the inscriptions of the earliest dynasties of any “Keeper of the Royal Seal,” as we find so frequently alluded to in the hieroglyphic texts from the Middle Kingdom onwards, and it would consequently appear as if the king himself in those early times attended to the business connected with his Treasury Department. ”

“ The history of cylinder seals in Egypt covers the period from prehistoric times to the end of the 46Twenty-sixth Dynasty, but they were only in general use down to the end of the Twelfth Dynasty, when they gave place to the more convenient “scarab” form of seal. They may be most conveniently classified according to the subjects found engraved upon them, but it is also an important matter for the student to carefully note the shape and the size of their perforation, two points which are often of considerable importance when it is desired to accurately date a specimen.
Fig. 20. ”

“ The bezel is of green-glazed steatite, carved in the shape of a scarabaeus-beetle with a human head, and mounted in a thin gold funda. On the base of the bezel is engraved in intaglio, and within a cartouche, the name of the “Good King Aauser-ra (Apepŷ I) , giving life.” The cartouche is surrounded by a continuous rope-pattern. The hoop of the ring is of gold, and the bezel is secured to it by means of a gold wire running longitudinally through the funda and scarab, and coiled tightly round its two ends. ”

“ The old Egyptian or Babylonian who first took an impression of his signet on a lump of plastic clay, had discovered the 12principle of printing, though it took the human mind many hundred years before the next great step was made, that of smearing some black or coloured substance upon the seal and taking a “print” of it on plaster, as in the tomb of Thothmes IV (circa B.C. 1400) , and in ink on a papyrus of the Ptolemaic age. ”

“ The word for signet is here Sah (variants and Sah, note the necklace and cylinder seal as determinative) , and the signet was repeatedly used in ancient Egypt to denote a man of noble rank, one who was allowed to carry a signet with the royal name engraven upon it. Osiris is named Sahu, “seal bearer” of the gods whom he has called into existence, and a hymn [28] calls him the glorious Sahu among the sahus. The Prince Khnemhetep (2000 B.C.) , at Beni Hasan, says of himself that he was 28distinguished above all the king’s nobles (sahu) ”