Ancient Near Eastern Cylinder and Stamp Seals in Australian Collections

This catalogue of ancient Near Eastern cylinder and stamp seals in Australian public collections is a revised and updated version of the work which was first published in 1990. It now supplements the catalogue of specimens in the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, which was published by the author in 2001, and incorporates several seals from other collections. It does not cover examples in private possession. The seals recorded are mostly without provenance and include some of uncertain origins. They range in style from Cypriote to Persian, and Anatolian to Egyptian, and in date from the late 4th millennium BCE to the early 1st millennium CE. They are representative of the places and periods to which they have been attributed and have been set in their historical and technical contexts for interpretative purposes. These acquisitions, far from the lands where the seals were produced, illustrate not only the course of cultural events through which the Near East passed in antiquity but the development of Australian interest in and taste for Old World archaeology.