Radocsay Dénes - Gerevich Lászlóné szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei 32-33. (Budapest, 1969)
BOARDMAN, JOHN: Near eastern and archaic greek gems in Budapest
NEAR EASTERN AND ARCHAIC GREEK GEMS IN BUDAPEST I am indebted to Dr. Szilágyi for inviting me to publish these pieces in the Budapest Museum of Fine Arts and for supplying me with notes upon them and photographs of the stones. Miss M.A.V. Gill first drew my attention to them and Mr. Briggs Buchanan kindly discussed nos. 1 and 2 with me. The photographs of impressions are by Robert L. YVilkins. 1. Green serpentine pyramidal stamp seal (Figs. 4, 5). 1 The device is crudely cut and may be intended for a scorpion. The shape is a Bronze Age one, but it continued long in use, and this is probably to be attributed to a North Syrian workshop in the Early Iron Age. A seal in the Louvre has a similar shape but with elaborately incised sides, and the device on it is cut in a very similar manner to ours. 2 2. Green and brown serpentine scarab (?). (Figs 0, 7). 3 The back is cut as a very rounded beetle with a roughly cut double line below the thorax and the elytra edges hatched as though to suggest the legs, although the high plinth is left plain. Perhaps this has been reçut from a stamp or scaraboid to this shape. A sphinx crouches to the left in a line border. Above it a crescent ; behind it an ankh; before it what may be intended for two Aramaic letters, yod or he and resh. The type derives from the Assyrian sphinx with rounded head and hair rolled on the neck. This is a Syrian version, probably of the seventh century B. C. Something like the type had already heen copied in the eighth century in this area to judge from a stamp seal, perhaps of neo-Hittite shape, from Al Mina. 4 Our example has the straight Syrian wing, but there are others with the ends lightly curved and some examples may usefully be cited. Two are stamps with rounded backs, in a finer style, and both with the crescent above. 5 Two others are related in being scaraboids with the backs levelled to take a star device. 6 For the ankh with the 1 Inv. 66.13. A. 23X20, height 16 mm. 2 D e 1 a p o r t e, Catalogue des Cylindres i pl. 60. G 8. 3 Inv. 55.239. 16>Xl4, height 6,7 mm. 4 JHS 58 (1938) pl. 15. MN 451, from Levels 7/8. A circular stamp; the device in a hatched border. 5 Von der Osten, Newell Collection (now at Yale) pl. 32.516, chalcedony; van Buren, Sissa Collection pi. 8.112, white limestone. 6 London BM 296, Walters pi. 6, chalcedony from Egypt; E. Berlin S. 3235 — 1374, serpentine, Forschungen und Berichte 8 (1967) pl. 6.15.
