Giorgio Buccellati and Marilyn Kelly-Buccellati

     Starting with the mention of a previous report published on Backdirt, in which sealings and tablets of Old Akkadian period were presented, the authors stress how this documentation is important indeed both for its dating and its emplacements: in fact, they represent the northernmost evidence of cuneiform writing for the third millennium BC and they offer a clear interpretation of the building where they have been discovered in [NB: a comparison is established between data given from the New York Times and the Backdirt, underlining the importance of choosing the most reliable source to get a proper archaeological information].
     The present paper deals with a large storehouse exposed in previous excavations, yielding many sealings from a vault structure (excavated in 1992 in sector B) which could be identified as a E₂.KIŠIB, i.e. 'the house of the seal'.
     All these sealings have probably been used to seal boxes or ceramic vessels (being less likely used to lock doors). The total number of sealings after 1993 campaign resulted in 500 items (80 of them inscribed) found together with two small tablets and fragments of other thirty tablets (carrying administrative texts except for a school tablet).
     Despite the texts on the tablets are in Sumerian, those carved in the text boxes of the sealing are to be possibly read in Hurrian; furthermore, the iconography of some sealings is very peculiar, for instance that portraying a small figure touching the lap of a second seated figure (see figure on p. 1).
     All these elements carry to better identify sealings practices and royal propaganda at Urkesh, showing how the city started “to take on a human fabric with its own particular artistic tastes, reflections of ceremonies, and records of administrative and intellectual life” (p. 5).

[M. De Pietri – November 2019]