8th C. Abbasid Chalcedony Seal Intaglio with Kufic Inscription

Near East, Persia, Islamic, Abbasid period. An oval signet ring bezel cut from dark chalcedony. Its flat face is engraved in intaglio with a short Kufic legend inside an inner oval frame. The letters rise in upright strokes with squared ends, and the opening word may read "Allah", a common invocation on seals of the period. A border of notches and pellets runs around the frame. Like any seal, the legend was presumably cut in reverse so that it read correctly when pressed into clay or wax, letting its owner seal letters, documents, and goods. The stone was once set in a metal ring, now lost. It is a small personal object that was both a mark of identity and a working signature, light enough to wear every day. The ring of pellets and short bars around the central field is a habit inherited from Sasanian seal-cutting, where similar beaded borders framed both portrait and inscribed seals. Engravers in the Persian lands kept the convention after the Islamic conquest, replacing figural images and Middle Persian legends with Arabic in Kufic script. Seals like this one show that continuity at the scale of a single workshop: an older Persian decorative frame around a new script and a new faith. In the early Islamic world the signet was a legal instrument as well as an ornament. A seal impression could authenticate correspondence and contracts or secure a container. Legends were usually a personal name, a short pious phrase, or an invocation of God, sometimes combined. Item # 205248

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