Cylinder-seals of Dynastic times which bear hieroglyphic inscriptions may be divided into groups according to the meaning of their inscriptions. Thus we have (I) a group which bears the names and titles of kings and other royal personages; (II) a group of officials which bear the king’s name and the title of the office or official, but never the personal name of the latter; and (III) a small group of private seals which bear the name and titles of the former.
Fig. 28.
IMPRESSION OF A CYLINDER-SEAL FROM MR. MACGREGOR’S COLLECTION.
Fig. 29.
IMPRESSION OF A CYLINDER-SEAL OF NARMER.
(From Petrie’s Royal Tombs, II, Pl. XIII, 91.)
Fig. 30.
IMPRESSION OF A CYLINDER-SEAL OF KING ZER.
(From Petrie’s Royal Tombs, II, Pl. XV, 108.)
Cylinder-seals bearing Royal names.
One of the earliest Royal seals that we know of is that of Narmer, the predecessor of Mena; it is reproduced in outline in fig. 29, and gives merely the Horus-name of the king. The Royal seal of Zer, Mena’s successor, gives besides the name of the monarch, a figure of him seated and wearing the two crowns, typical of Upper and Lower Egypt (see fig. 30). At the time of the Third Dynasty the Royal name is first put into an oval ring or cartouche, and a little later the name is generally accompanied by the statement that the king is “beloved of the gods,” or beloved “of the goddess Hathor.” With Men-kau-ra the title Sa Ra, “Son of Ra,” first appears,[[90]] but it is not till the Twelfth Dynasty that we find the full name of a king cut on a single seal. At the time of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Dynasties the king’s name is generally given in a cartouche either with[[91]] or without[[92]] his official titles, and then it is often accompanied by the statement that he is “beloved of Sebek”[[93]] of some specified locality. A few cylinder-seals of this period also bear the names of two or more kings.[[94]] The only specimens of the Hyksos period that are known up to the present are those of Khŷan; one of these is in the Museum at Athens,[[95]] another is in the possession of Signor Lanzone,[[96]] and a third is in the Cairo Museum (see fig. [23]). Two remarkable cylinders of about the same period are figured in Pl. VII, 2, and VIII, 1; while to the latter half of the Hyksos period must be placed the cylinder-seal of King Antef (Nub-kheper-ra), of the early Seventeenth Dynasty, which is figured in Pl. VII, 12. The Royal cylinder-seals of the Eighteenth Dynasty generally bear the king’s name in the cartouche without other decorations,[[97]] but some have also a figure of the king, or figures of gods and animals.[[98]] The large specimen reproduced in outline on Pl. VIII, 7, is the seal of Sety I of the Nineteenth Dynasty, and is one the latest specimens of Royal cylinder-seal known.
