Stratified Cylinder Seals from the Diyala Region

"The cylinder-seals here reproduced and described are those discovered by the Iraq Expedition of the University of Chicago at four sites, Khafajah, Tell Asmar, Tell Agrab, and Ishchali, in the neighborhood of the Diyala River, east of Baghdad. Their dates range from the later of the prehistoric periods (Jamdat Nasr) down to the Old Babylonian. The distinctive feature of this catalogue is that all of the seals are presented in strict order as found, both by depth and by position, in the sequence in which they were buried. There are five introductory chapters, the last (on the inscriptions) by Thorkild Jacobsen. The present collection includes few notable artistic pieces; the most curious are those of what the author has named the "Brocade style," the oddest in subject those numerous pictures of goats outside "houses," often beside a stream, the "temple-and-flock" motif. These are all of the Jamdat Nasr period."