Ancient West Asian Seals and Sealings:
Ongoing Projects, Current Research, Digital Practice
Date: July 24-26, 2023
Conference venue: Fachbereich Geschichts- und Kulturwissenschaften der Freien Universität Berlin, Fabeckstr. 23-25, Raum -1.2009
Organization and contact: E. Roßberger and the ACAWAI-CS team at FU Berlin.
Attendance is free and open to everybody interested in ancient West Asian seals and sealings. However, please register in advance at: vorderasiatische-archaeologie@geschkult.fu-berlin.de
We will stream parts of the conference online via Webex. Details will be made available a few days before the event.
Conference Program
Monday, 24.07.2023: Ongoing Projects
14:00 Elisa Roßberger (FU Berlin): Welcome
14:10 Elisa Roßberger, Anna Kurmangaliev & M. Andrea Valsecchi Gillmeister: Three years of work on the ‘Annotated Corpus of Ancient West Asian Imagery: Cylinder Seals’
14:45 Christoph Uehlinger (Universität Zürich): Stamp Seals from the Southern Levant: A progress report five months before closure—and thinking ahead
15:15 Ariane Thomas (Louvre Paris): A review and prospects on the Louvre's ancient Near Eastern glyptic collection
16:15 Agnete Lassen & Elizabeth Knott (Yale Babylonian Collection; presenting online): Update on Seal Digitization Efforts at the Yale Babylonian Collection
16:45 Laurie Pearce (UC Berkeley) & Ron Wallenfels (New York University; both presenting online): 1) Achieving text and image integration: HBTIN and AUWE 19 2.0; 2) On the reuse of seals in the Hellenistic Near East
17:15 Jacob Dahl (Oxford; presenting online): Recent advances in the capture, storage, and dissemination of images and metadata of cylinder seals in the CDLI
17:45 Oya Topçuoğlu (Northwestern University Chicago; presenting online): Going once, going twice, sold! The online market in Mesopotamian cylinder seals
18:15 Katrien de Graef (Ghent University): Personal seals and sealing persons. Identifying seals, their owners and users on Old Babylonian Sippar tablets
Tuesday, 25.07.2023: Current Research
09:00 Clélia Paladre (Louvre Paris): Revisiting the Proto-Elamite phenomenon and its glyptic productions
09:30 Adelheid Otto (LMU München): More fragments of officialdom from Fara: The 2022 sealings from the Early Dynastic II 'Seal Pit'
10:00 Rudi Mayr (New York): Servant seals of the Akkadian and Neo-Sumerian periods: Typology and terminology
11:00 Zena Awad (LMU München): The representation of the figure of the 'Suppliant Goddess' on Syrian cylinder seals in the second millennium B.C.: A new perspective
11:30 Zsombor Földi (LMU München): Seal inscriptions written on clay tablets: Drafts or something else?
12:00 Elena Devecchi (University of Turin): Sharing seals in Kassite Babylonia: Some case-studies
14:00 Diana Stein (Birkbeck London): Mittanian glyptic by any other name
14:30 Marta Luciani (Universität Wien): The Nuzi bullae collection at the Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East: Report on current research
14:45 Ruben Davtyan (Universität Halle): Mitanni Seals in South Caucasus: Image and Context
15:00 Nedal Haj Darwich (London): Hybrid beings in the glyptic of Syria, Upper Mesopotamia and Assyria in the Late Bronze Age
16:00 Dominik Bonatz (FU Berlin): The Imagery of Middle Assyrian Seals: A Semiotic Approach
16:30 Zoltan Niederreiter (ELTE Budapest): A Particular Group of Neo-Assyrian Cylinder Seals
17:00 Tiffany Ftaimi (Universität Heidelberg): Insights into Heaven: Deities and Ritual Scenes in the Iron Age
17:30 Vanessa Boschloos (Ghent University): Levantine and Egyptian stamp seals in Byblos: current research
Wednesday, 26.07.2023: Digital Practice
9:00 Albert Dietz (LMU München): Is Old School still the Best School? Analysing Picture Elements in Western Asian Seal Research the Traditional Way
09:30 Alessandro di Ludovico & Sergio Camiz (Rome): Attempt to Optimise Information through Quantitative Study of a Small Glyptic Dataset
10:00 Silvana di Paolo (CNR Rome): Image Recognition Tools and Seals: Seeking Knowledge and Meaning
11:00 Yvonne Helmholz (FU Berlin): Sealing Practices in Archaic Uruk: 3-D-Modeling of a Broken Context
11:30 Hubert Mara (Universität Halle): 3D Forensic for Seal Imprints and Clay Tablets
12:00 Martina Trognitz (ÖAW Wien): Linked Open Data, Wikidata, Minoan seals (preliminary title)
Roundtable discussion and closure.
