The king's workshop

Introduction to Royal Seals

Within the corpus of seal impressions excavated in the royal palace most sealings were not inscribed but the inscribed seals and those uninscribed had a number of characteristics in common.

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Introduction to King’s seals

The number of seal impressions connected with the king is appreciably smaller than those of either the queen or her courtiers. We have concluded that this is due to the fact that the area of the royal palace we have excavated is connected with the queen and was a working area where sealed containers were opened by her staff thereby breaking the seal impressions that had been used to seal them. The six known seals of the king in the corpus are evidenced by only 12 rollings;one of them, K4, A1q914.8, had two rollings on the same piece. K1 had traces of four rollings; K2 of three rollings. K3, K5 and K6 had traces of only one rolling. (REFERENCE https://urkesh.org/mz/a/mz/texts/staff/mKB.htm pp. 47-49. When this article was published we had only excavated traces of five of the king’s seals and eleven impressions))Therefore the result is that many fewer rollings were found for the king than for the queen’s seals.

Because of this we know little about the King’s workshop or workshops.

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King’s Iconography

Akkadian iconography, smaller seals (CK), new settings eg. globe, lion at feet,of child at knees.

When we have the king shown in his seals (eg. K2) then he is emphasized through the iconography. So in K2 his seat has a lion beneath.

but this is not as certain as in the queen’s seals. If the king is shown in his seals (eg. in one of child with feathers) then he is emphasized through the iconography, but this is not as certain as in the queen’s seals.

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Style

Finer carved seals , crisp, fine details , include depictions of deities known from southern Akkadian iconography, smaller seals (CK), new settings eg. globe, lion at feet, of child at knees.

The seal impressions correlated with the composite drawings are as follows:

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