The Glazed Steatite Glyptic Style: The Structure and Function of an Image System in the Administration of Protoliterate Mesopotamia.

AuthorCollon, Dominique

This book is a revised version of the author's 1989 doctoral dissertation written at Columbia University under Edith Porada. It originated, as the author tells us (p. xi), from a study of the glyptic material from Tall-i Malyan - a site in highland Iran which was the capital of the so-called proto-Elamite state at the turn of the fourth to third millennium B.C. She found that the different styles of glyptic used at that period "played a distinct if related role in the administrative system." She has focused on one of these styles, whose imagery, she believes, is "closely related in formal and structural terms to the proto-Elamite script with which it was used." She followed others in seeing a close connection between images and writing (pp. xi-xii).

The glazed steatite seals "are carved with distinctive imagery that is either fully abstract or combines abstract elements with representations of animals, usually horned quadrupeds" (p. xv). She has found in the imagery of this style "a complex visual system made up of a large number of individual design elements combined according to discernible rules." In the introduction (pp. xv-xxii) the author discusses the evolution of the different methods of looking at glyptic material over the years.

In chapter one (pp. 1-20) the author summarizes studies relating to the role played by glyptic art in economic administration. Her aim is to test Dittmann's suggestion that seal images were "forerunners" of the earliest scripts by comparing them with characteristics of such scripts, which she enumerates (pp. 16ff.) In chapter two (pp. 21-40) Pittman reviews the evidence for the development of early administrations and the role of seals in this development. Her views, which posit "the simultaneous . . . use of several symbol systems," are summarized on pp. 37-38 (and cf. an alternative view on pp. 3334). She supports her reconstruction of administrative development by pointing out that "when signs were introduced, the use of seals on tablets diminished," "some design elements find close parallels in the Uruk sign list" and that "one of the first styles of glyptic art to exhibit . . . abstraction is the glazed steatite style" (p. 40). A recent addition to the corpus of earliest Middle Uruk cylinder seals (p. 26) is one from Tell Brak in north-eastern Syria (D. and J. Oates, "Excavations at Tell Brak 1992-93," Iraq 55 (1993): 176-77, 186, figs. 31 and 44). In chapter three (pp. 41-71) the various types of...

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