The queen’s workshop

Marilyn Kelly-Buccellati – July 2000, April 2025

Talk about how many seals we have evidence of belonging to the queen.

DAM B

The DAM B seals are carved in the Deep Fringe style; as can be clearly seen in Al.386. Here the chair of the queen and the two stools of the lyre player and singer are deeply patterned as are the pleats of the queen’s garment. The fringe of the large attendent facing left with a long arm is interesting. Her garment is carved so that there is a ridge down the center in the relief and on the top of that ridge the fringe starts and is carved from that point in short diagonal lines going toward the front of the garment; fringes always hang toward the front of the garment; this is also the carving technique used for the fringe of the attendent behind the queen. Therefore in both these cases the fringe is not carved on the edge of the relief but more on the surface of the relief. The eyes are carved as a raised oval with a dot in the center; the eye is large but relatively in proportion with the shape of the face and the size of the nose and lips. Heads are rather long and narrow.

DAM C

DAM c ( lyre/ table ) seals are also carved in the Deep Fringe style. The rendering of the eye is clearly seen in A1.261 where the eye of the long armed attendewnt is two carved lines not attached to each other which form an oval (see small drawing in my copy of the catalog). In this figure the mouth is carved with lips slightly apart which gives a livlier appearance; this is the case in all the figures in this DAM c seal. Her head is elongated as in all the Deep Fringe figures. Al .412 has a good example of the fringe of the attendent with a long arm over the table being deeply carved on the front edge of the figure.

DAM A

The DAM A variant of the Large Child is carved in the Deep Fringe style which is shown through the carving of the pleats in the seated figure facing left and the way the pleats are carved as they go under this figure sitting on the stool. Also the pattern of the braid of her hair is deeply carved. The example which shows the fringe down the garment of the standing attend, on the left which faces right indicates that it is down the center of the garment but that the center is a slightly raised ridge and the fringe goes from the height of this ridge down to the right and therefore the fringe is emphasized but not as deeply as the pleats.

A1.386

A1.386 is the lyre-attendent scene and shows two important aspects: the queen has her hand on her lap and is finger tip to finger tip with the small person in front of her. The attendent behind the queen has fringe down the middle of her dress and not on the edge; the queen has the pleats of her dress carved in the Deep Fringe style. Perhaps the Deep Fringe style should be called the Deep Pleated style if the fringe is not carved on the edge. A5.158 also is a good representation of the finger to finger hand representation.