CORPUS OF ANCIENT NEAR EASTERN SEALS IN NORTH AMERICAN COLLECTIONS - A PROJECT OF THE IRANIAN INSTITUTE, THE ORIENTAL INSTITUTE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO AND THE YALE BABYLONIAN COLLECTION
Book Details + Condition: The Bollingen Foundation and Pantheon Books (Washington, DC). First Edition, 1948. Hardcover quarto (12.5" x 9.5"). From the Collection of the Pierpont Morgan Library, catalogued and edited by Edith Porada. In Collaboration with Briggs Buchanan and with a Preface by Albrecht Goetze. Two-volume hardcover set with original slipcase (both labeled Volume I, but this is complete). Pagination: 187pp; 189pp, with Tables and Index. Profusely illustrated with plates and maps. The first volume of the two-volume set consists of photographic plates of Near Eastern seals, while the second volume adds corresponding descriptions to each plate. From the massive historical collection of King Lawrence Parker - academic, dissertation author, and book collector extraordinaire. A rare collection in very good condition, with firm binding; Parker's name to ffep; interior is clean and free of markings. Minor shelf wear only to original slipcase.
From the Morgan Library and Museum website: Between about 1885 and 1908, the American collector William Hayes Ward assembled, probably on Pierpont Morgan's behalf, the collection of 1,157 seals that forms the core of the Morgan's collection. Ward summarized Morgan's intentions as follows: "It is the chief object, as I understand it, of Mr. Morgan in bringing to this country the written and figured monuments of the early East, such as tablets, seal cylinders, bas-reliefs or statues, to put within the reach of American scholars the material necessary for adding to the knowledge of the world. ... It is desirable that such objects be not scattered and lost to scholarship, but that they be gathered into responsible and accessible collections." Although Morgan's collection contained a few important stamp seals, including some later Sassanian examples, most of the seals he acquired were cylinder seals. Two additional major gifts have enhanced the collection: 74 cylinder seals and 70 stamp seals collected by Robert F. Kelley and given by his sister Caroline M. Burns in 1977 and 194 cylinder and 258 stamp seals given by Jonathan P. Rosen in 1986. The seals collection covers all the significant styles of Mesopotamian engraving from the end of the fourth millennium to the fourth century B.C. as well as most of the styles of other countries of the ancient Near East. Areas of particular strength include Babylonian (first dynasty), seals of the second millennium made outside of southern Mesopotamia (Cappadocian, Syrian, and Mitannian), and Neo-Assyrian seals. The Middle Assyrian seals are some of the finest in any collection. Pierpont Morgan collected nearly three thousand cuneiform tablets, the bulk of which are now in the Yale Babylonian Collection, which he founded. A few are retained at the Morgan. They include a Neo-Assyrian version of the beginning of the Epic of Adapa, first of the antediluvian sages; the earliest Akkadian version of the familiar Noah motif; a ritual for an eclipse of the moon; letters; a record of sale of a field; and a marriage contract. The seals collection was first published in 1948, in the Corpus of Ancient Near Eastern Seals in North American Collections: The Collection of the Pierpont Morgan Library. Dr. Edith Porada, author of the Corpus, was appointed Honorary Curator of Seals and Tablets in 1956, a position she held until her death in 1994. In addition to the Corpus, Porada's legacy to the Morgan includes her library, now part of the Reference Collection, her papers, and her extensive collections of modern seal impressions, photographs, and drawings. These were made from public and private collections around the world, some of which are no longer accessible to American scholars.
