Information

Time and Area of Origin

Sasanian seals are a distinct group among the seals of the Near East. They can be easily distinguished by their forms and motifs. Their time of origin is the era of the Sasanian kingdom which existed from AD 244 to AD 651 roughly in the area of present day Iran and Iraq but temporarily occupied also parts of today's Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Anatolia, the Kaukasus and Pakistan.

Collections

A large number of sasanian seals is still extant in public and private collections, R. Göbl estimates their number at several ten thousand. Many collections are already published, some of the most important are:

• Staatliche Museen, Berlin
  (about 700 items) [Horn, Steindorff, 1891)
• Eremitage, St. Petersburg
  (about 800 items) [Borissov, Lukonin, 1963]
• Britisches Museum, London
  (about 800 items) [Bivar 1969]
• Bibliothèque Nationale und Musée du Louvre, Paris
  (together about 1000 items) [Gyselen 1993]
• Rijksmuseum van Oudheden und Koninklijk Peningkabinet, Leiden
  (about 1200 items) [Gyselen 1997]

The Sigilla collection cannot match the big collections. But the publication on the internet offers the opportunity to show the items of the collection in colour photos of decent resolution and thus give a better idea of the beauty of Sasanian seals than printed publications with their black and white pictures can do.