Cylinder seals — the Persian-period revival and the Late Period addenda.
The cylinder seal — a perforated stone or faience cylinder rolled across damp clay to produce a continuous impression — is primarily a Mesopotamian tradition that reached Egypt in the early dynastic period and was largely supplanted by the scarab stamp form during the Old Kingdom. A Persian-period revival between 525 and 332 BCE brought the form back into Egyptian use as a parallel sealing technology, and a smaller Ptolemaic-period continuation extended the practice into the early Hellenistic centuries. The atlas's cylinder-seal file documents one hundred and eighty-nine specimens — primarily Late Period addenda to the Boardman-Vollenweider Greek-gem framework — with full provenance documentation.
Why this is a supplementary file rather than a stand-alone catalogue.
Anneke Vermeulen's editorial decision to treat the cylinder seals as Late Period addenda — supplementing the scarab corpus rather than standing as an independent catalogue — reflects the structural reality that the Egyptian cylinder-seal corpus is comparatively small (under two hundred documented specimens with secure provenance worldwide), comparatively well-studied in the existing literature (Boardman 1970, Vollenweider 1979, the Berlin and Hermitage collection catalogues), and is most usefully positioned as the Persian-period parallel to the contemporary scarab and stamp-seal tradition. The file therefore concentrates on the addenda since the Boardman-Vollenweider corpus closes — new specimens that have entered documentation since 1979.
The Persian-period revival.
Between the first Persian conquest of Egypt by Cambyses in 525 BCE and Alexander's arrival in 332, the cylinder seal returns to Egyptian administrative use alongside the scarab. The reasons are partly administrative (Achaemenid Persian practice favoured the cylinder for legal and commercial sealings) and partly artistic (the Persian court style of cylinder seals brought new iconographic conventions into Egyptian production). The atlas documents one hundred and twelve cylinder seals from this two-hundred-year window, the largest cluster in the corpus. Stylistically these specimens divide into three groups: a 'court style' showing the Persian king in heroic combat with monsters, executed with the formal Achaemenid royal idiom; a 'provincial style' showing Egyptian deities and scenes in cylinder format but using essentially Egyptian iconographic conventions; and a 'hybrid style' showing Egyptian deities in compositional arrangements borrowed from the Persian court style.
The Ptolemaic continuation.
The Ptolemaic period saw a continuation of cylinder-seal production in Egypt, primarily for administrative purposes, alongside the dominant stamp-seal and signet-ring forms. The file documents fifty-three Ptolemaic-period cylinder seals, mostly in faience and steatite, mostly in administrative contexts (sealings from papyrus archives, jar-stoppers from temple storerooms, clay bullae from the Alexandrian customs). The Ptolemaic cylinder seals are less artistically ambitious than their Persian-period predecessors and are easier to date because they often carry regnal-year datings.
Materials and findspots.
The corpus's cylinder seals are mostly in steatite (eighty-two specimens), faience (forty-six specimens), and hardstones — carnelian, jasper, chalcedony, amethyst (forty-one specimens). The remaining twenty specimens divide across bone, glass, glazed composition and one example in cast lead. Documented findspots concentrate at Memphis, Saqqara, Naukratis (the Greek emporion in the Delta), Heracleion-Thonis (the underwater site near Alexandria), and four documented Persian-period contexts in the Eastern Desert mining sites. The Heracleion-Thonis material — eighteen specimens — has all been entered into the corpus since 2014 because the underwater excavation produced the most precisely dated cylinder-seal corpus from any Egyptian site.
Forgery and the modern market.
Cylinder seals attract less forgery interest than scarabs because they are less commercially recognisable to non-specialist buyers and because the rolling-impression technology is harder to fake convincingly. Six specimens in the corpus have been re-attributed as modern forgeries during the file's preparation — five pressed-mould copies from the Beirut workshops of the late twentieth century and one over-cleaned electrotype copy of a Berlin specimen. All six are in the forgery register.
Specific Persian-period workshops in evidence.
Three distinct production groups within the Persian-period revival can be distinguished in the corpus on stylistic grounds. The first, which the atlas has tentatively labelled the 'Memphite court workshop', shows the closest engagement with Achaemenid royal iconography and the most accomplished hardstone carving — twenty-eight specimens, mostly from the lapis lazuli and carnelian series, with documented findspots clustered around Memphis. The second, the 'Naukratis Greek group', shows a clear Greco-Egyptian hybrid style combining Egyptian iconographic elements with Aegean compositional habits — sixteen specimens, all from the Naukratis emporion or with Naukratis-period provenance, mostly in steatite and faience. The third, the 'Eastern Desert garrison group', is a smaller and more workmanlike production associated with the Persian-period mining and military outposts at Wadi Hammamat and Bir Umm Fawakhir — eleven specimens, all in glazed steatite, with relatively simple iconographic programmes drawn from the available scarab repertoire. The remaining cylinder seals of the Persian-period sub-corpus are too poorly provenanced or too stylistically generic to be assigned to a specific workshop, and they are documented in the corpus as 'Persian-period, unprovenanced or unassigned'.
The companion file on the scarab seals corpus covers the parallel stamp-seal tradition; the attribution methodology applies. The 2024 hoard reports include the small Heracleion-Thonis underwater find that added three Persian-period cylinders to the corpus.