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5.9: Marking Ownership

  • Page ID
    34194
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    Ownership inscriptions have been briefly touched on above in relation to cylinder seals and votive offerings; the cup with Proto-Canaanite inscription in Figure 4 is an example of a text marking ownership being deposited in a funerary setting. There is, however, an additional variant found in the region, namely the personalised signet ring. These may have functioned as seals or simply as markers of identity, but are to be distinguished from the amuletic rings discussed earlier both in function and method of manufacture, being made for specific individuals, from more prestigious material, and being shaped by hand rather than being mass produced from moulds for unknown consumers. Three unusual examples have been found in the southern Levant in which the script used was Hittite hieroglyphs. The first of these is a bronze signet ring, found in a male burial at Tel Nami in association with bronze pomegranate-headed ‘sceptres’ and incense burners. The ring is incised with a male name, possibly us/sa and according to Singer (1993: 190) the form of both ring and name point to a Syrian owner who had adopted the use of Hittite script.

    Two similar finger rings, this time in silver, were also discovered by Petrie at Tell Far’ah South (UCL Institute of Archaeology EVI.64/8–9; Singer 2003). These were inscribed with the names of their presumed owners, a man called Zazuwa and a woman called Ana (Figure 12). Both were found in the same deposit, Area EF level 386, which also contained four faience, two glass, two steatite and one limestone scarab, silver, gold and bronze earrings, faience vessel fragments and some 295 beads, pendants and amulets, made out of glass, faience, and diorite, carnelian and other stones. Many of these items have an Egyptian or Egyptianising character (MacDonald et al. 1932: pls 73.58–70, 78; most of them are now in the University College London, Institute of Archaeology Collections). The structure they came from was part of a series of rooms built near the former gateway of the site. There is nothing in the architecture or pottery of this locus to suggest that it was functioning as a cultic space, and so the most likely explanation for the deposit was that it was a domestic or commercial cache of jewellery, with the rings being included for their intrinsic or exotic value. Unfortunately Petrie did not publish any comments on the specific findspot, and it is therefore not clear if they were found in occupation debris or had been secreted away.

    How did these small objects bearing the script of the Hittite empire find their way to the southern Levant? As personalised items it seems likely that their owners originally carried them there, but it is not at all certain that they still belonged to those owners when they finally entered the archaeological record. It also seems likely that the texts they bore would have been unintelligible to almost everyone in the region. The same could be said of a Hittite steatite button seal found at Megiddo (Singer 1988–1989: 106), or a hematite cylinder seal from Beth Shan which may carry Hittite hieroglyphs (James and McGovern 1993: 231, no. 2). However, like Egyptian hieroglyphs, the script used is intrinsically decorative and these objects may have been valued by non-Hittites simply for their exotic ‘foreign’ design; their materials may also have held appeal for their recycling value. Small, portable, personal objects such as these contrast with the more direct and official Hittite activity suggested by the Hittite royal bulla found at Aphek, which a recent study unexpectedly demonstrated to have been made from a local source of clay (Goren et al. 2006: 166–167). However ultimately these few examples only serve to underscore the fact that Hittite material culture has left very little imprint on the region, suggesting that this particular variety of cross-cultural encounter was rare.


    This page titled 5.9: Marking Ownership is shared under a not declared license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Kathryn Piquette (Ubiquity Press) via source content that was edited to the style and standards of the LibreTexts platform; a detailed edit history is available upon request.