 In this case study, we're going to be looking at a particular type of object and that is a cylinder seal. And these were used very widely throughout an area of the world called the fertile crescent. And the fertile crescent is located roughly here. This is where, as you might recall, if you've taken history courses, we also discussed this a little bit back in our second module. This is where we have the development of the world's first cities and civilizations in sort of the western tradition. And we have a growth of early civilization from this fertile crescent area into a much larger sort of crescent shaped area that includes Egypt and parts of Anatolia as well. One of the major sites for these new cities was Mesopotamia, the area that I'm showing you here in my blue frame. Mesopotamia means land between the rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates. And we also have one of the last of the civilizations of the ancient Near East, the Persians. Ancient Persia is located right here. So this map is just meant to give you some orientation. Now we've focused in a little bit more on the area that we know as Mesopotamia. And here it is framed by my box. The Persian Gulf is this great body of water here. And Mesopotamia, as you may recall, means the land between the two rivers. It's derived from the Greek. Those two rivers are the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers. And as you might notice, this is a very wet, very fertile flood plain. It's not one that has a whole lot of mineral wealth. For rocks and minerals, really people had to go to the mountains that you see to the east in this view. And so that's one of the growing concerns with rock crystal is that it was a precious commodity that had to be brought from outside this area. Early writing developed in Mesopotamia in this time of the first cities. And this writing was a type called Cuneiform, which consisted of wedge shaped characters impressed into clay blocks. And these blocks would be dried. Sometimes if they were fired, they were extremely permanent. And what my arrow is pointing to on the right is actually a portion of an envelope for one of these Cuneiform documents, also made of clay. But you'll notice that it has a whole series of images on it. And these were made by a cylinder seal. The concept of a cylinder seal is pretty simple. It's basically sort of a signature type of thing that's used to seal an official document. And it consisted of a cylinder carved so that when it was rolled over the damp clay, an image would appear in relief. And that's what you're seeing here in this diagram. Two seals you see here are from one of the very earliest civilizations, the Sumerians. The one on the top is from the Sumerian city of Uruk. The lower one is from the Sumerian city of Ur. And you might recognize that the lower one is Lapis lazuli. And the reason I brought these in is that I want to show you some of the facets here of the overall design and the way that it can be used to repeat. So you can see the impressions that were made in modern museums on both of these images. And here, there are the impressions. We have a line here on this particular cylinder seal up above. And this is a crack that kind of goes through and affects the overall design. So take a look at the effect of that crack on the impression of the cylinder seal. And that's a good way of telling what's also carved on the cylinder seal. The earliest cylinder seals tended to be made of fairly soft stone. And as cutting technology, cutting and engraving technology improved, they started to use harder and harder stones. And with the harder stones and the additional amount of work that was required to work with them, we also have higher prestige for these harder stones. And that's where rock crystal comes in, because it's about a seven on the Mohs hardness scale. What you see here is a drawing taken from an Egyptian tomb showing a man doing engraving on a stone. And then on the right, you have up above a cylinder seal, a very early primitive one, and its impression down below. And you can see that the engraving simply consists of lines gouged into this stone that make an impression when it's rolled. This would have been done possibly with a chip of a harder stone like quartz that would be embedded in some sort of wooden or metal tool. It's possible that they could have used a flint stone and simply gouge the marks with it. And some metals can also make marks in the softer stones. And like I said, most of the early versions of these cylinder seals tended to be fairly soft stones. I'm bringing in rock crystal here just to remind you of the sparkle and the clarity and the hardness of this wonderful material that we're dealing with in this particular module. And again, remind you that it was a bit of a high status material for the manufacture of cylinder seals. We don't have many of them made out of rock crystal, but the ones we have tend to be quite large, very elaborately decorated, and as you'll see, some of them actually have some extra decoration. These would have also required different tools for working, and we'll talk about that next. Here we're looking at a painting from an Egyptian tomb showing bead making from stones. And the man on the right has a bow drill and is using it to hollow out beads. On the left you see the other man stringing beads together to form an elaborate necklace. A bow drill, like the one being handled by the man on the right, consists of a wooden drill stock, a bit, and a bow with a bow string. And when you move the bow back and forth, you can cause the drill and its bit to spin back and forth. And we know from just studying the marks inside of the cylinder seals, because they were always hollowed out so that they could be worn around the neck on like a leather thong, just from studying those marks, we know that they were hollowed out using bow drills. And we also know that for rock crystal, that same technique was used to actually make marks in the stone. It's also possible to hollow one out using flint if you have a softer stone, and that's what they did earlier on before the use of the bow drill. Here we're looking at two views of a rock crystal cylinder seal in the Detroit Institute of Arts, and the impression that is made when it is rolled on a damp piece of clay. And as you can see, we have an incredible amount of detail in this image, even though it's quite small, you're probably talking about a work of art that is about the length of an adult thumb from bottom to top, maximum. And look at all of the detail and the garments of these figures with their arms up. You can make out features of their faces. And also the Kenea form inscription is very, very clear. All of this is thanks to the fact that the artist is using a bow drill with some sort of a disc grinding wheel that has a harder grit like corundum or flint or something that is on that wheel to make these cuts in the rock crystal. And since rock crystal was so difficult to work and required this level of technology, we know that these were extremely high status objects. Here's another rock crystal cylinder seal, and this one is particularly special. You're actually looking at two different rock crystal seals here. One that is mounted within copper fittings and another one that is simply on its own with no mountings. But if you look closely, you might notice that both of them on the inside where it was drilled have little red markings. And this was very carefully painted on the inside with these red marks. And this is a way of emphasizing the fact that we have this clear crystal being used as the material for these. It's something that enhances the qualities of the crystal because we're seeing color through it. And it sort of celebrates and really calls attention to this material. In addition to being a high status material, there was also the belief that rock crystal could bring wealth to someone who had a rock crystal cylinder seal. And if you had a hematite cylinder seal, on the other hand, that tended to lose you a lot of money. So we actually have some sources that talk about the value of these materials. I want to finish by taking another look at those two cylinder seals from the previous slide and looking at the imagery on them. If you look at this impression here, we have probably the name of the owner in the inscription on the right, if you look at the impression. And then we have two views of hero-like figures fighting animals. The figure on the left side fighting the lion is sort of a human hybrid creature. He has bull horns and a tail. And bull horns were often associated with royal power and also with protection from the gods. And it's very common to see rulers in Mesopotamian art from all periods, not just Sumerian art, but Akkadian, Assyrian, and so on, see rulers associated with scenes of animal combat and also adopting some of the imagery of power from animals, particularly horns and tails. Just like in the previous slide, the cylinder seal that we're looking at here also features animal combat or human figures overpowering animals and controlling them. And you can see here two bearded figures with very elaborate hairstyles. These are also signifiers of earthly power and they are clearly overpowering these lions. They have them by the tails on the left. It appears as if the figure is actually riding the lion. And then we also have a small deer in the center. Perhaps they are saving the deer from these more powerful creatures. It's hard to say. This is just a small glimpse of a huge amount of material that's out there. And if you get interested in cylinder seals, most major museums have at least a few. And if you go someplace with a good collection of ancient Near Eastern art, you might see them in the thousands.