Sealing on jar stopper (?)
An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art
This lump of clay, called a ‘bulla,’ bears four impressions of the same stamp seal, featuring an image of a stylized tree. Based on its shape, this bulla seems to have been a stopper in the mouth of a jar. Seals were ancient accounting tools, used for example to indicate who supplied a commodity, who was responsible for its disbursement, or who received it. In this case, the seal impressions may indicate who supplied the contents of the jar. Once the jar was opened, the bulla was discarded. This bulla was excavated at Shahr-i Qumis in northern Iran, which has been identified as the ancient city of Hecatompylos, established by the Parthians as the capital of their empire by about 200 B.C. In Greek Hecatompylos means ‘a hundred gates,’ suggesting that the city was quite large. Indeed, the modern archaeological site includes several mounds, only a few of which have been excavated, and a vast area covered with potsherds. This bulla was found in a well at Site IV. The well appears to be have been filled deliberately, but it is difficult to say whether this bulla – and the jar to which it may have been attached – was placed in the well for a specific reason or if it was simply discarded. The large building at Site IV was completely filled with dirt sometime in the late 1st century B.C. or early 1st century A.D., perhaps when the Parthian capital was moved elsewhere and the city’s elite residents left with it.
Ancient Near Eastern Art
An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Met's Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art cares for approximately 7,000 works ranging in date from the eighth millennium B.C. through the centuries just beyond the emergence of Islam in the seventh century A.D. Objects in the collection were created by people in the area that today comprises Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Syria, the Eastern Mediterranean coast, Yemen, and Central Asia. From the art of some of the world's first cities to that of great empires, the department's holdings illustrate the beauty and craftsmanship as well as the profound interconnections, cultural and religious diversity, and lasting legacies that characterize the ancient art of this vast region.