Tel Kedesh Sealing Images

This project presents photographs described in the volume University of Michigan and University of Minnesota Excavations at Tel Kedesh I: The Hellenistic Archive and its Sealings, by Sharon Herbert. The volume is published in the series ASOR Archaeological Reports, available here: ISBN-13: 9780897571180

Overview:

This is a database of images to accompany the first volume (ARS 30) in a projected series of final reports on the 1997-2012 University of Michigan/University of Minnesota excavations at Tel Kedesh, located in the Upper Galilee of modern Israel and the hinterland of ancient Tyre. It presents the 2nd c. BCE Hellenistic archive and the 2000+ sealings found there. The Kedesh archive complex was situated within a large, multipurposed administrative building, first constructed under Persian rule in the late 6th c. BCE and then modified under Ptolemaic and Seleucid rule in the 3rd and 2nd centuries BCE. The sealings in the archive date to the final Seleucid phase of occupation in the first half of the 2nd c. BCE. The first part of the volume situates the Kedesh archive within the context of excavated Hellenistic archives from Carthage in the west to Selucia-on-the-Tigris in the east and reflects on the varieties of archives, clienteles, and sealing practices so far known from the Hellenistic world. The second part of the volume presents an annotated illustrated catalog of the images and iconography of the 1,733 readable impressions found on the sealings. The subject matter of the 1,293 seal rings that produced the impressions was for the most part Greek. We present these by subject in seven chapters, with links to images accessible in Open Context:

1. The Greek Gods, from Aphrodite to Zeus
2. Heroes, Warriors, and Miscellaneous Mortals
3. Human Portraits
4. Generic Anthropomorphic Figures
5. Fauna and Flora
6. Inanimate Objects
7. Select Inscribed Sealings

Related Publications:

Additional information about the interpretive and scholarly context of these sealings is available in:

Herbert, S.C., 2023. University of Michigan and University of Minnesota Excavations at Tel Kedesh I: The Hellenistic Archive and its Sealings. Archaeological Reports, 30. American Society of Overseas Research (ASOR). ISBN-13: 9780897571180.