The 665 Old Babylonian seals in the British Museum’s collections are probably
representative of the materials used in the Old Babylonian period (M. Sax in Collon
1986 : 4 – 11 , especially p. 5 ).^3 The 351 haematite and 84 other iron oxides accounted
for 68 per cent, while the remainder were fairly evenly distributed between quartzes
(jasper, rock crystal, agate, carnelian), calcite minerals (mostly limestone), hydroxy
magnesium silicates (mostly serpentinite and chlorite, the most widely used materials
for, respectively, Akkadian and Ur III seals), and a variety of other materials. Haematite
was adopted for seals in contemporary Assyria, Syria and Anatolia, but was rarely
used in later periods, except for elite Cypriote seals in the fourteenth century BCand
for Sasanian stamp seals of the third to early seventh centuries AD. The rarity of lapis
lazuli (ten seals) may indicate that access to the mines at Badakhshan in northern
Afghanistan was difficult or impossible (but see Figure 7. 4 – a royal-name seal).
The cylinder seal was predominantly an administrative tool in the Old Babylonian
period, and it was therefore the optimum size and shape for rolling out on clay,
— Dominique Collon —Figure 7. 1 Warrior king, Lama and small naked woman. Inscribed ‘Imibanu,
son of Enlil-mansum, servant of the god Enlil’. Haematite. 2. 45 × 1. 05.
BM ANE 108846 ( 1914 - 4 - 7 , 12 ) (Collon 1986 , no. 271 ).Figure 7. 2 Lama, the warrior king and the goddess Ishtar.
Inscribed ‘Ur-mesukkina, son of Za, servant of the god Shulpae’. Haematite. 2. 8 × 1. 5.
BM ANE 89169 ( 1894 - 5 - 20 , 2 ) (Collon 1986 , no. 387 ).