ReViews
Corpus of West Semitic Stamp Seals
Nahman Avigad, revised and completed by Benjamin Sass
(Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities/Israel Exploration Society/Institute of Archaeology, Hebrew University, 1997), 640 pp., $90
Seals are among the most personal andat the same timethe most official objects from antiquity. A kind of ancient identification card, seals give the personal name of the owner, often with his fathers name attached, and sometimes even mention his title and his grandfathers name. This comprehensive catalogue presents 1,217 ancient stamp seals with inscriptions in Hebrew and other languages known as West Semitic.





