Scarabs

by Percy E. Newberry

2. Importance of the Seal in Ancient Times.

Importance of the seal in ancient times.

It is very difficult for us, especially for those of us who are not familiar with Eastern civilization, to realize the great importance that was attached to the seal by the peoples of the Ancient World. It was far more of a necessity in everyday life to the people of antiquity than are our seals to us, or locks and keys to a modern householder. We still use the seal, it is true, for our legal documents, sometimes for our letters, for our post-bags, and occasionally for sealing up a room. Our Ministers of State have their Seals of Office, our Corporations and Companies have their registered official seals, and in our Coronation ceremonies there is the investiture of the Sovereign with the Royal Signet Ring. But all these uses of the seal are as ancient as the pyramid-builders of Memphis. When we use the signet for sealing our letters or our legal documents, we are but following in the footsteps of the Ancient Egyptian, who, many hundred years before the time of Moses, employed the seal for the same purpose. When our Ministers of State receive from the Sovereign their Seals of Office, they are but following a custom that prevailed in Egypt as early as the Fourth Millennium before Christ; and when Edward the Seventh was recently invested with the Royal Signet Ring at his Coronation, he was but conforming to a ceremonial act that was recorded by the rulers of the Nile Valley four thousand years before William the Norman set foot on the shores of Britain.

But in ancient times the seal was used for many purposes for which later inventions have proved more convenient. At the present day, when closing our doors, we generally lock them by a spring-bolt, and only attach a seal on very rare occasions. Locks and keys, however, are comparatively modern inventions, for the most ancient in Egypt are not older than the Roman period; and what locks and keys are to us, seals were to the people of the Old World. In ancient times, whenever a man left his home he always sealed up such parts as contained stores or other valuable property, so that they might be rendered secure from the attacks of thieves or slaves. In like manner boxes containing clothes or personal ornaments, and jars containing wine or oils, were kept under seal. The words meaning “to close” and “to seal” were in Egyptian[^[2]] synonymous; indeed, to place a thing “under seal” was an ancient expression equivalent to the modern one of keeping a thing “under lock and key.”

To secure property from theft was, however, only one of the many uses of the seal; it was employed in other equally important ways. In Western countries, where writing has now become a universal accomplishment, a person’s written signature is sufficient to give authority to a document, but in ancient times a seal or signet was a necessity to anyone possessed of even the smallest amount of property, for without it no legal or other writing could be attested. Herodotus (I, 195) mentions that everyone in Babylonia carried a seal, and the same remark would apply with equal truth to Egypt. In England, from the Norman Conquest to the time of the taking effect of the original Statute of Frauds (1677), the seal was always used to make a writing valid and binding, and in Scotland every freeholder was required by law to have a registered seal.[^[3]] At the present day an Eastern, when sealing a letter, smears the seal, not the document, with the sealing-substance, and illiterate persons will sometimes use the object nearest at hand, such as their own finger, which they daub with ink, and press upon the paper therewith. In Babylonia the finger-nail was sometimes impressed into the clay as a seal; while in America, in comparatively recent times, the eye-tooth impressed upon the wax has been used for attesting a document (1 Wash. Va. 42, quoted in American Law Review, Vol. XXVIII, p. 25). The right hand smeared with ink and impressed upon a parchment was often used in mediaeval times in place of a signature, and this, with the seal impressed beside it, gave rise to the modern legal expression, “Witness my hand and seal.” The Sultan’s cipher, which appears on the coinage and official documents of the Turks, is said to have originated in this way. The Republic of Ragusa concluded a commercial treaty with the Ottomans in 1395, by which it placed itself under their protection, and it is said that Murad signed the treaty, for lack of a pen, with his open hand, over which he had smeared some ink, in the manner of Eastern seals—a veritable sign-manual. (Stanley Lane-Poole, Turkey, p. 35.) In ancient times, however, the document was rolled up and tied with a piece of string, the knot of which was covered with a pellet of clay and sealed. It was not only in Egypt that this was so, but in all countries of the ancient world; in Babylonia and Assyria as well as in Greece and Italy. A written signature would have been of no avail to attest a document; a seal had always to be used. Doubtless in the earliest times only the most powerful persons possessed seals, but as civilization advanced the officers of the administration came to use, besides their own personal seals, official ones for government purposes. Thus it was that the seal, being the real instrument of the power and authority of an office, came to be used as the symbol of it, and the delivery of an official or State seal to an individual, gave to that individual the authority and power to execute the rights and duties of his office.

The various links in the history of the seal which connect its original employment for securing the contents of jars, to its latest one for transferring authority from one person to another, are all preserved, and form a most interesting object lesson in “social evolution.” The seal is, indeed, so intimately associated with the early history of civilization, that it is probable that its origin goes back to the very institution of the right of private property. Its early history is full of interest. If we turn to any of the literatures of the Old World—whether it be the Egyptian or Babylonian, the Hebraic or Assyrian, the Greek or Roman, it is the same; we find in each and all of them abundant passages concerning the importance of the seal and the various uses that it was put to. Further, if we study these references, we discover that the signification of these little objects was everywhere the same, and if passages were selected from the Egyptian writers regarding the uses of the seal, it would be easy to parallel them all from the works of any of the other Old World peoples. We ought, however, before discussing the various uses of the seal, to inquire into its origin.