000 02853cam a2200301 i 4500
001 a582768
008 150831s2014 xxu sm 000 0 eng d
009 582768
035 _a1459139177
040 _aFRAS
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_cFRAS
_dFRAS
_eAFNOR
043 _aa-sy---
072 _aMAI
082 0 4 _a939.4
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084 _a956.1
094 _aTH-USA
095 _axxu
100 1 _aYalcin, Serdar
_eDoctorant
_4305
_9413163
245 1 0 _aSeals, identity and patronage in the ancient Near East, ca. 1550-1050 BC
_h[Ressource électronique] /
_cSerdar Yalcin
502 _aDoctor of Philosophy : Histoire : Columbia University : 2014
300 _a1 vol. (527 p.)
504 _aBibliogr. p. 493-527
520 _aNumerous art historians and anthropologists such as Rudolf Wittkower, Michael Baxandal and Alfred Gell have addressed the question of how art reflected the people by and for whom it was produced in the context of different cultures and periods. In my dissertation, I intend to contribute to this discussion through a study of two hundred and sixteen Mesopotamian and Syrian seals and seal impressions. Made of a variety of precious, semi-precious and non-precious materials such as stones, metals or clay, and carved with detailed designs and pictorial images, seals are some of the most distinctive types of ancient Near Eastern art, and were widely diffused in the society. The seals studied in this dissertation originally belonged to the individuals, from royalty to special cooks, representing different segments of the society, and are dated to the second half of the second millennium BC. I carried out a detailed analysis of the material, inscriptions, images on these objects and their context of use. This analysis shows that the seals that belonged to royal and non-royal individuals such as princes, priests/priestesses, scribes, doctors, singers, tax collectors and other temple and state officials may be indicative of certain aspects of their owners' identity such as social class, profession and gender. Additionally, most of these seals were not mass-produced, but unique items created according to the choices of individual patrons. However, it was still possible to recognize the works of different craftsmen especially in the seals from Babylonia and Assyria through their distinctive styles. In this sense, Near Eastern seals were complex works of art in which the stylistic inputs of craftsmen were fused with the iconographic and compositional choices of the patrons, who commissioned them. These different choices, in return, might have signified the social class, gender, professional affiliation, and even political ambitions of the ancient seal owners.
856 _uhttp://www.fondation.org.ma/dsp/index/a582768-18
930 _a582768
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990 _aEl Basri
999 _c621826
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