Beatrice Teissier
Egyptian Iconography on Syro-Palestinian Cylinder Seals of the Middle Bronze Age
1. Edition 1996
224 pages
ISBN 978-3-525-53892-0
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht
Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis. Series Archaeologica -
plus S&H
Book
This book seeks to contribute to the history of Syria-Levant in the Middle Bronze Age by assessing Egyptian ‘influence’ and Syro-Levantine perceptions of Egypt through an analysis of the use of Egyptian imagery in Syro-Levantine cylinder seal iconography. This includes an evaluation of the nature and composition of Syrian glyptic as a whole. The book concludes that Egyptian imagery, although inspiritional, owed nothing to Egyptian political or religious influence in Syria. Rather, this imagery was assimilated coherently into an integral Syrian glyptic repertoire, which was an expression of the political stability and cultural autonomy of Syria in the Middle Bronze Age. The smaller cylinder seal evidence from the Lebanon and Palestine also reflects these regions’ political and cultural status quo: strong Egyptian influence in the Lebanon and an ambivalent situation in Palestine.
