Seal carving is an ancient form of art dating to the 6th millennium BC with its acme going back to the Bronze Ages in Minoan Crete and Mycenaean Greece. After a long-term pause, the special miniature art revived during the 8th century BC, mainly based on the patterns of its prehistoric ancestors.
A seal is a small sized object with at least one carved surface which, when pressed, leaves an impression on another object, the carrier of the sealing. The use, shapes and materials of seals vary. They were the basic medium for the certification of ownership of the sealed object for commercial or financial transactions and for declaring the authenticity of administrative documents. Seals were also used as amulets; hence many findings are perforated. Moreover, archaeological artifacts reveal that seals were used as votive offerings or grave goods. Sealing impressions also decorated vases or spindle whorls. Among the documents of the Thematic Exhibition someone will find neolithic seals with geometric motifs made of stone or clay. The use of seals in the farming communities of the period still confounds archaeologists as no seal impressions have been discovered yet. Some researchers speculate that seals were used to decorate cloth or human skin.
Usually, seals were made of stone, metal or clay. Seal impressions can also be found on masses of glass, bone or wood. Seal stones made of precious or semi-precious stones as jasper, amethyst, agate, carnelian, chalcedony, soapstone, faience, quartz or the exotic lapis lazuli fascinate with their diversity of colors and shininess. Smoothing and carving tools differentiate depending on the material.
The variety of the depictions which are carved with mastery in the small surface of stones is impressive: animals, real or mythical, such as lions, ibexes, bulls, griffins, sphinxes, birds, fishes, ritual scenes and games (e.g. bull leaping [tavrokathapsia]), geometric and herbal motifs, human figures, deities. In some seals the creators engraved inscriptions as well.
The Thematic Exhibition monitors the long route of the art of seal carving from the Neolithic to the Roman period while pointing out the skillfulness of the craftsmen and the special historic and artistic value of those distinct miniature objects which combinate ceramics, engraving, sculpture and epigraphy and reflect the social, economic, administrative and religious activity of their times. Among the documents of the Exhibition there are seals made of clay, seal stones (small size stones with depictions made in intaglio or in relief in various shapes; they may be lenticular, almond shaped, oval, scarab shaped or prismatic), cylinder seals (the illustration of those cylinder shaped stones was mainly in intaglio so that the imprint would create a repetitive relief image on the soft clay), signet rings (rings with a seal) and sealings (pieces of clay which preserved the seal impressions).
The exhibition contains items from the following institutions:
