RESOURCESMuseen zu Berlin), Mitteilungen aus den orientalischen Sammlungen
4 (1891), organized by motif with inscriptions of priests, men, and
women. A. J. Borisov and V. G. Lukonin published the seals in the
Hermitage Museum, Leningrad, as Sasanidskii gemmy: Katalog ob-
raniya gosudarstvennogo ermitazha (Leningrad, 1963). The definitive
catalogue of British Museum seals IS A.D.H. Bivar's Catalogue of the
Western Asiatic Seals in the British Museum, Stamp Seals, 1I: The
Sassanian Dynasty (London, 1969); and C. J. Brunner has published
a catalogue of Sasanian Stamp Seals in the Metropolitan Museum of
Art (New York, 1978). Shorter notices of other collections are given
by J. M. Unvala's "Report on the Examination of Sasanian Seals of
the Indian Museum, Calcutta," INSl 12 (1950): 98-102, and by
P. Gignoux, "Les collections de sceaux et de bulles sassanides de la
Bibliotheque Nationale de Paris," in La Persia nel Medioevo, pp. 535-
- One should now consult P. Gignoux, Catalogue des sceaux, camees
et bulles sasanides (Paris, 1978) in the Bibliotheque Nationale and the
Louvre.
The tendency has been to categorize seals according to motif in
order to discuss the significance of their images. See N. C. Debevoise,
"The essential characteristics of Parthian and Sasanian Glyptic Art,"
Berytus 1 (1934): 12-18. P. Ackerman's "Sasanian Seals," in Pope's
Survey, part V, pp. 784-815, organizes seals by motifs or symbols
and argues for their astrological meaning. J. M. Unvala's "Sassanian
seals and Sassanian monograms," in M. P. Khareghat Memorial Vol-
ume (1953), I: 44-74, is similar. The most ambitious attempt to ca-
tegorize Sasanian seals by motif is that by R. Gobl, Der siisiinidische
Siegelkanon: Handbiicher der mittelasiatischen Numismatik, IV
(Brunswick, 1973), who proposed a typology of eleven basic motifs.
For a criticism of Gobl's categorization of certain motifs, see the review
by J. Lerner, lIMES 7 (1976): 313-15.
Some of the personal seals are not Magian but Jewish or Christian.
Both J. A. Lerner's Christian Seals of the Sasanian Period (Istanbul,
1977), and S. Shaked's, "Jewish and Christian Seals of the Sasanian
Period," in Studies in Memory of Gaston Wiet, ed. M. Rosen-Ayalon
(Jerusalem, 1977), pp. 17-31, identify seals which seem to have Chris-
tian or Jewish significance. But since Biblical themes could be either
Jewish or Christian or perhaps both, the religious provenance of such
themes remains ambiguous. For a critique of Lerner, see P. Gignoux,
"Sceaux chretiens d'Epoque sasanide," lranica Antiqua 15 (1980):
299-314.