Seals and Seal Impressions from Ancient Israel

Seals were used as stamps to impress images and/or words onto clay objects. They were often perforated so as to be suspended from cords, or were set into rings, and thus also served as jewelry. They were made of semiprecious stones, such as jade, opal, and amethyst, but often of limestone or bone, which suggests that their use was not limited to the well-to-do. Some were shaped like scarab beetles, such as a seal from Phoenician Achziv, near Acco, with an incised image of a stylized scarab beetle on its back.

Most seals were only “scaraboid,” or scarab-like—that is, less overtly shaped like scarabs, with their backs only slightly vaulted. Other seals were shaped like cones. Generally about the size of a fingernail but sometimes larger, they had flat sealing surfaces—usually round or oval—where the images or words were engraved. The engraving was done in the negative, or “mirror writing,” so that, when stamped into soft clay, the impression could be read in the positive, like a modern rubber stamp.

The photos of the seals in the Posen Library are reversed to make the writing legible, except in the case of seals that are accompanied by (modern) impressions made from them.

Often the impressions were stamped on clay bullas (flat, disk-shaped lumps of clay) attached to the cords that tied letters and legal documents written on papyrus and rolled or folded (or both). The bullas identified the authors of the letters or the parties or witnesses to the documents. The bulla would have to be broken to open a document; an intact bulla indicated that the document had not been previously opened and possibly changed.

The impressions were sometimes stamped on clay vessels to identify their owners or the authority certifying their capacity, as on the handle of a storage jar found at Lachish in the remains of the destruction of 701 BCE; the handle is stamped with a lamelekh seal impression reading “(Belonging, or pertaining) to the king. Hebron” (see the discussion of this type of seal impression in Lamelekh Seal Impressions).

The images on the seals include floral designs, animals (often in action), hybrid creatures, and sometimes celestial bodies, humans, and ritual scenes. Many of the images were derived from Egyptian, Phoenician, Aramaean, and Mesopotamian prototypes. It is often difficult to determine whether images of natural phenomena were intended as depictions of the natural world or as symbols for something else, or even as having magical potency. When foreign religious images were borrowed, we do not know whether the Israelites (and others) who borrowed them understood them in their original sense. It is conceivable that some seals were imported, perhaps with space left for Israelite engravers to add the name of the owner. Israelite seals originally contained only images and were probably used as amulets or ornaments, or for making impressions on clay to indicate ownership, or for some other purpose. As literacy spread, seals began to include the owner’s name as well. Most seal owners were men, though a small number were women. During the seventh century BCE, in Judah, inscribed seals lacking imagery other than floral or other border designs came to predominate, although iconographic seals—with and without inscriptions—did not disappear. It has been suggested that engravers with an artistic bent elaborated these designs to compensate for the lack of images.