Studien zu stempelsiegeln aus Palastina/Israel, vol. 4.

• Author: Ward, William A.

This is the fourth and final volume in a very productive series of essays on the subject of scarabs and related objects.(1) Professor Keel and his colleagues have done ground-breaking research on a wide range of problems concerning the scarabs and seals discovered in Palestine, notably in isolating locally manufactured groups and in defining numerous elements in their iconography. While one may not always agree with the conclusions reached, much new material and exhaustive analyses of what has long been known have resulted in a stimulating and provocative new look at how these objects were adapted to the artistic and religious background of a non-Egyptian society through the introduction of local motifs as well as the alteration of Egyptian ones.

The first essay in the present volume (pp. 1-52) deals with an Early Iron Age group discovered by the German Megiddo expedition over ninety years ago. This group belongs to one of the three traditions of seals and scarabs of the Early Iron Age, those made of steatite or faience and based partly on Egyptian originals. The other two traditions are a North Syrian style mostly using hematite and quartz, and a local style made of limestone. The Megiddo group shows the iconography typical of Early Iron Age Palestine: Egyptian motifs appear along with indigenous ones such as "Baal with a lion," "the lord of scorpions," and "the lord of crocodiles." The repertoire is typical of scarabs found in Palestine during the late Ramesside age made in workshops either in southern Palestine or the eastern Delta (see below).

The second essay, "Der Pharao als Sonnengott" (pp. 53134), is concerned with the motif of a seated royal figure surrounded by various symbols following an Egyptian original but done in a local linear engraving style. An analysis of the figure itself and each of the subsidiary symbols indicates to Keel that this represents the enthronement of the Egyptian king as Horus in the form of the sun-god. It is possible that the seated figure represents the sun-god himself, although Keel rightly discounts the possibility that this is a Canaanite deity. On the basis of the engraving style and the archaeological contexts where known, these particular representations date to post-New Kingdom times, probably to Dynasty XXII.

Here, Keel offers one of the intriguing interpretations that characterize his research. The central theme of the "Egyptian sun-king" and the knowledge of Egyptian symbolism illustrated in...