Selves Engraved on Stone: Seals and Identity in the Ancient Near East, ca. 14151050 BCE. This item is unavailable.Selves Engraved on Stone: Seals and Identity in the Ancient Near East, ca. 14151050 BCE

Typically carved in stone, the cylinder seal is perhaps the most distinctive art form to emerge in ancient Mesopotamia. It spread across the Near East from ca. 3300 BCE onwards, and remained in use for millennia. What was the role of this intricate object in the making of a person's social identity? As the first comprehensive study dedicated to this question, Selves Engraved on Stone explores the ways in which different but often intersecting aspects of identity, such as religion, gender, community and profession, were constructed through the material, visual, and textual characteristics of seals from Mesopotamia and Syria.

Serdar Yalçın, Ph.D. (2014), Columbia University, is Assistant Professor of Ancient and Medieval Art History at Macalester College. He published various articles on seals and identity, and artistic interconnections in the ancient Mediterranean in peer-review journals and edited volumes.