Studien zu den Stempelsiegeln aus Palastina/Israel, Band II.

• Author: Porada, Edith

The book contains six essays that continue the studies of Palestinian stamp seals begun in the first volume of the series.(1) In the foreword (pp. ix-x) Othmar Keel summarizes the main focus of each of the essays. The first essay, which is by Hildi Keel Leu, presents the relatively small number of Palestinian stamp seals preceding the end of the Early Bronze Age before ca. 2000 B.C. These stamps generally share forms and designs with those excavated in Syria and southeastern Anatolia and may largely consist of importations. The publication of the finds made at Kibbutz Ha-Gosherim adds to the limited published material an important provenanced group of seals of Late Halaf and Ubaid-period style. The seals on p. 13: 7-9 are especially of interest because they show a central small hollow that is iconographically significant.(2) This essay, which was carefully documented on the basis of available excavation reports, is an important contribution to the documentation of early stamp seals in general.

In the second essay Keel himself deals with the group of largely scarab-shaped seal amulets that were produced in western Asia in the eighteenth century B.C., earlier than the appearance of the so-called Hyksos type of scarab. These early scarab-shaped objects are mostly made of faience and show their omega-shaped design in raised relief.(3) The omega design is often combined with some other forms, which Keel connects with the nude goddess, a major figure in later Palestinian stamps. The associations with a female deity connect this essay with the following ones.

The meaning of the omega-shaped symbol has been repeatedly discussed. In Keel's references one misses the book by Ilse Fuhr, Ein altorientalisches Symbol: Bemerkungen zum sogenannten "Omegaformigen Symbol" und zur Brillenspirale (Wiesbaden, 1967). Keel's suggestions that the design represents the mother goddess' lap and that the form below the omega represents the vulva remain to be supported by further evidence. The same may be remarked of many of his suggestions throughout, such as the one that the rosette and crescent as well as a quatrefoil carved on some of these seal amulets of the type that bears the omega-shaped design should also be associated with the same complex of ideas.

The third and longest essay, by Silvia Schroer, deals with the representations of the nude goddess in stamp seals - that is, mostly scarabs of Palestine/Israel. One part shows the goddess or her symbols on these...