ReViews

Corpus of West Semitic Stamp Seals

Nahman Avigad, revised and completed by Benjamin Sass (Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities/Israel Exploration Society/Institute of Archaeology, Hebrew University, 1997), 640 pp., $90

Seals are among the most personal and—at the same time—the most official objects from antiquity. A kind of ancient identification card, seals give the personal name of the owner, often with his father’s name attached, and sometimes even mention his title and his grandfather’s name. This comprehensive catalogue presents 1,217 ancient stamp seals with inscriptions in Hebrew and other languages known as West Semitic.

The corpus represents the lifework of the late Nahman Avigad, who (when not conducting excavations in Jerusalem’s Jewish Quarter) traveled from collection to collection, and country to country, to locate and study as many West Semitic stamp seals (including several that had been presumed lost) as he could. His work has been completed, revised and partially updated by Benjamin Sass.