Stamps and Seals from the Collections of the Aleppo Museum
Art History Museum Studies Academic Textbook Archaeology Numismatics & Sigillography Ancient Near East Syriac Studies Reference Catalog
Stamps and Seals from the Collections of the Aleppo Museum is the only English-language catalogue dedicated to the 1,300-plus cylinder, stamp and seal impressions held in Syria’s most important archaeological museum. Written by two leading Near-Eastern archaeologists, Hamido Hammade and Astrid Nunn, the 169-page study presents every major piece—Neo-Assyrian chalcedony cylinders, Old Syrian haematite stamp seals, Hellenistic garnet ring-stones—through crisp new photographs and precise 1:1 line drawings by Cornelie Wolff. Each entry gives find-spot, material, measurements, iconographic description and full epigraphic commentary, turning the book into a field manual for archaeologists, museum curators, collectors and historians who need to identify comparable seals in surface surveys or unpublished collections.
What makes this softcover indispensable is the authors’ decade-long cooperation with the museum staff: every object was re-photographed and, where necessary, re-examined under raking light and silicone impressions, so the plates show details invisible in earlier Syrian catalogues. The introductory chapters synthesise Aleppo’s seals with those from Ebla, Mari and Ugarit, creating a chronological map of Syrian glyptic styles from the late fourth millennium to the Persian period. A concordance cross-references former excavation numbers, making it easy to reconnect seals to their original locus sheets. For buyers building a research library, the generous 210 × 297 mm format and sturdy BAR Publishing wraps mean the volume lies flat on a scanner or digitising cradle without the gutter loss common in smaller catalogues.
This 2016 reprint of the 1999 first edition is already becoming scarce in the secondary market; clean, unmarked copies with intact wraps and all plates are especially sought after by graduate programmes in archaeology and art history. The copy described here shows only light page creasing—no underlining, stamps or foxing—so it remains giftable for a scholar or a serious collector of ancient Near-Eastern glyptics.
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