1. General Remarks.
General Remarks on Egyptian seals.
There are few small objects of antiquity which present themselves so often to the traveller’s notice in Egypt, as the little seals of stone, pottery and other material, carved in various forms and engraved on their base, or around their circumference, with an ornamental device or brief hieroglyphic inscription. These seals are found in a variety of forms; some of them are cylindrical in shape, others are button-shaped, but by far the greater number are carved to represent the scarabaeus beetle standing upon an elliptical base, the under side of which is engraved with the device or inscription intended to be impressed upon the sealing clay. The specimens of this last variety of seal are universally known as “Scarabs.”[[1]] Like the gems of Greece and Italy, Egyptian seals are generally found in excellent preservation; other and larger antiquities usually show on their face the signs of weathering, or they bear the marks of mutilation by man, but these interesting little monuments of a long past age often continue to this day as perfect in their finish and delicate workmanship as when they first left the hands of the ancient lapidary. The soil of Egypt literally teems with them. Thousands have been found among the débris of long deserted and ruined towns and temples; the fellah often turns them up in the soil whilst ploughing his fields, and rich harvests of these little objects have been gathered by the antiquary from the myriad tombs that line the desert edge on both sides of the Nile from Alexandria and El Arîsh to Aswân. Outside the boundaries of the Nile Valley also, Egyptian seals are frequently discovered; and in our museums are to be seen specimens from Italy, Sicily, Cyprus and the Greek Islands, as well as from the Eastern shores of the Mediterranean, and even from as far afield as Nineveh and the valley of the Euphrates.
Clay impressions of seals.
Besides the actual seals, pieces of fine clay bearing impressions of them are often brought to light by the excavator; some of these served as sealings to jars of wine, honey, etc., whilst others had been affixed, like modern seals of wax, to documents written on papyrus or leather. The documents to which some of them had been attached have, unfortunately, too often perished from decay, or they have been consumed by fire, but in the stamped clay may still nearly always be seen the holes for the string, or the markings of it, by which the seal was fixed to the document: in some instances even the string itself remains. These sealings are usually unearthed in excellent preservation, and they are consequently as useful for the purposes of study as the seals themselves.
Importance of the study of Egyptian seals.
To the student of the history and civilization of ancient Egypt the importance of these seals and “sealings” is very great; to him they are as the coins and gems to the student of Ancient Greece and Rome. Their range in date is greater than that of any other class of inscribed monument; the earliest appear as far back as the very dawn of History, and these little objects present from that period onward an unbroken series of such length and completeness that they afford a most valuable illustration of the early history of the Nile Valley. In some cases they supply the outline of a portion of history that was otherwise almost wholly lost. To them we owe most of our information regarding the earliest dynasties. For much of our knowledge of the period intervening between the end of the Twelfth and the beginning of the Eighteenth Dynasties we are also indebted to the same class of monument, while small scarab-shaped seals are as yet the only extant evidence of several of the Hyksos kings. Their value as corroborative evidence to other historical data must not be overlooked, nor can certain classes of them be lightly cast aside as bric-à-brac by the archaeologist who sets himself the task of solving, or of inquiring into, the many problems that have lately arisen concerning the early people of the Mediterranean region. To the student of Ancient Art also they afford a most happy illustration of the ever-varying styles in vogue in successive reigns, and their study, as will be seen in the following pages, often enables us to obtain those glimpses into the manners and customs of the ancient Egyptian people which so wonderfully help to elucidate our view of bygone days and men.