Seals on the Persepolis Fortification Tablets, Volume 1. Images of Heroic Encounter (Two Volumes, Part 1: Text and Part 2: Plates)

This is the first volume (text and plates) of the analytically legible seals (ca. 1,162) retrieved through many thousands of full or partial impressions preserved on the 2,087 Elamite administrative tablets recovered during the 1930s excavations at Persepolis, Iran, and published by Richard T. Hallock (OIP92) in 1969. The tablets are dated by date formulae in the texts to the years 509-494 B.C. in the reign of Darius the Great. The remaining and forthcoming two volumes are entitled: Seals on the Persepolis Fortification Tablets, Volume II: Images of Human Activity. Seals on the Persepolis Fortification Tablets, Volume III: Animals, Creatures, Plants, and Geometric Devices. Volume I introduces the archive and documents the 312 seals of heroic encounter (retrieved via 1,970 impressions) with high quality composite drawings and a separate volume of 291 halftone and line plate illustrations presented at a scale of 2:1. Entries provide commentary on administrative, social, stylistic, and iconographical features of the seals as well as systematic analysis of seal application patterns. The thirty-four seal inscriptions are presented by Charles E. Jones. Twelve appendices richly synthesize formal and iconographical data and integrate the seals with their associated texts. This major corpus offers extraordinary new material for the study of art and social history in the Achaemenid Persian Empire.