Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 11.djvu/178

 NOTES AND QUERIES. no s. XL FEB. 20,

its author to claims on M, but we fear that it is not at all likely.

By " Paul Pry," we may add, Thackeray intended John Poole the playwright, author of the famous comedy of that name (1825), and of the novels ' Little Pedlington ' and ' Phineas Quiddy ; or, Sheer Industry.' Poole died, at the age of 86, in 1872.

So we leave our list to the commentators, being as open to conviction as most people who have formed an opinion of their own. THOMAS RANDOI/PHTJS.

SEALS: THEIR EARLY USE.

SEALS have been used as a means of authenticating documents from very early times (see Blackstone's ' Commentaries,' 4th ed., 1774, Book II.. chap. xx. sec. 6, p. 305). We read, for instance, that Jezebel, the wife of Ahab, King of Israel, wrote letters in his name and sealed them with his seal (1 Kings xxi. 8) ; and there is a remarkable proof of the custom of attesting legal docu- ments by seal among the Jews in Jeremiah, where mention is made of the purchase of land being evidenced by a writing sealed " according to the law and custom," and attested by witnesses (chap, xxxii. 6-13, 14, 44). Proclamations of the Persian kings were also sealed with the king's ring ; and documents written in his name and attested with his seal had the force of law (see Esther viii. 8 ; cf. ' Cassell's Bible Diet.,' s.v. ' Seal '). The signet ring was very generally used for sealing among these early peoples, and Herodotus states that the Babylonians were accustomed to have their signets constantly with them (Lib. I. 195, ap. Layard, ' Discoveries in Nineveh and Babylon,' 1853, p. 608), as the modern Egyptian did, at any rate, to as late a date as the early years of the nineteenth century (Layard, p. 608 ; E. W. Lane, ' Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians,' 1837, vol. i. p. 44). Some of the signets Sir A. H. Layard saw he considers as old as the time of Nimrod (Layard, p. 603). Many ex- amples are to be seen in the British Museum.

Sir A. H. Layard in his explorations of Nineveh and Babylon discovered a large mimber of pieces of fine clay bearing the impressions of seals, which he considered there was no doubt had been affixed, like modern official seals of wax, to documents written on leather, papyrus, or parchment. In the British Museum are specimens of such clay impressions discovered in Egypt, bearing evidence that they have been attached to documents by strings or other

means, although the documents themselves have perished (ibid., p. 153).

Cylinders of hard stone engraved with some device were frequently used for im- pressing on the clay, and many of these are still in existence (ibid, pp. 155-6). It has been conjectured that these cylinders were amulets engraved with a kind of horoscope of the owner, or with the figures of the deities who were supposed to preside over the owners' nativity and fortunes. But it is evident that they were seals or signets to be impressed on clay or other material on which public or private documents were written (ibid., p. 608). Many Persian cylinders of this sort are in the British Museum ; and there is also there an im- pression of one bearing the name and titles of Sennacherib (ibid., pp. 603, 607). Cylinders were used by some of the Egyptians ; and in Crete there have recently been discovered seals engraved with figures in many points resembling those on the Karnak cylinders, dating from the fourth millennium before our era. In the exhibition of antiquities from Crete held at Burlington House in 1903 there was shown a photograph of the lip of an alabastron with the cartouche of the Hyksos king Khyan, dating circa 1800 B.C. There were also a number of drawings of clay impressions from the town of Knossos.

One of the earliest Egyptian seals that have yet been discovered is attached to some Twelfth Dynasty documents found by Prof. Flinders Petrie in the Pyramid of Amenemhat III. (see Times, weekly edition, 22 March, 1889). Sir A. H. Layard, how- ever, mentions impressions of two very early seals, one Egyptian and the other Assyrian, which he discovered ; and recently, when a new royal tomb was opened at Thebes, it was found that clay seals had been attached to the doors of the chambers, and that they bore on them the name of the King Thoth- mes IV. of the Eighteenth Dynasty. In some cases the raised portion of the seal was smeared with blue ink before being impressed upon the clay (see The Times, 9 March, 1903, p. 8).

The fine clay impressions discovered in Assyria by Sir A. H. Layard are, it is said, not unlike the " sealing earth " of the Greeks (Layard, p. 153), who used signets of wood in early times, but later of hard stone ( J. A. St. "John, ' The History of the Manners and Customs of Ancient Greece,' 1842, vol. iii. p. 148).

The earliest example of the signet among the Greeks is the well-known emerald ring