Die vorderasiatischen Rollsiegel der Sammlungen „Bibel+Orient“ der Universität Freiburg Schweiz

Abstract

The cylinder seal collection of the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, with its 455 seals, is one of the most important European collections in the public domain. At the basis of the collection are some 250 selected pieces from the former collection of Rudolph Schmidt. This collection had been assembled primarily in the 1940‘s and was given to the University of Fribourg by Erica Peters-Schmidt in 1981. Eventually this collection was enlarged by approximately 200 items, the greater part of which it was possible to acquire from well known collections (Aulock, Erlenmeyer, Marcopoli, etc.). Special attention was given to expanding the collection for each period in which cylinder seals played a role in Palestine/Israel and in which the seals are an important source for illustrating the dominant religious symbolic system of the period. Among these are the Middle Bronze period, with its motifs of classical Canaanite religion, the Amarna period, with the Mittani seals, and especially the neo-Assyrian period, with its familiar biblical themes such as the conlict with a dragon, the „lord of the animals“, the cult of the astral deities, etc. In the catalogue section every seal is precisely described with regard to material, engraving technique, style, and iconography, and further classified on the basis of chronological and cultural parallels. Summarizing introductions to each group outline the chronological problems and iconographic particularities which characterize the glyptic of each period. Hildi Keel-Leu describes the objects of classical Mesopotamian seal production from the Uruk to the Persian periods, while Beatrice Teissier focuses on the border regions, beginning with the large group of Syrian seals.