& Baan (eds) & Baan Bercken den Van ENGRAVED GEMS Many are no larger than a fingertip. They are engraved with symbols, magic spells and images of gods, animals and emperors. These stones were used for various purposes. The earliest ones served as seals for making impressions in soft materials. Later engraved gems were worn or carried as personal ornaments – usually rings, but sometimes talismans or amulets. The exquisite engraved designs were thought to imbue the gems with special powers. For example, the gods and rituals depicted on cylinder seals from Mesopotamia were thought to protect property and to lend force to agreements marked with the seals. This edited volume discusses some of the finest and most exceptional GEMS ENGRAVED precious and semi-precious stones from the collection of the Dutch National Museum of Antiquities – more than 5.800 engraved gems from the ancient Near East, Egypt, the classical world, renaissance and 17th- 20th centuries – and other special collections throughout Europe. Meet the people behind engraved gems: gem engravers, the people that used the gems, the people that re-used them and above all the gem collectors. This is the first major publication on engraved gems in the collection of the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden since 1978. ENGRAVED GEMS From antiquity to the present edited by B.J.L. van den Bercken & V.C.P. Baan 14 ISBNSidestone 978-90-8890-505-6 Press Sidestone ISBN: 978-90-8890-505-6 PAPERS ON ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE LEIDEN MUSEUM OF ANTIQUITIES 9 789088 905056 PALMA 14 This is an Open Access publication. Visit our website for more OA publication, to read any of our books for free online, or to buy them in print or PDF. www.sidestone.com Check out some of our latest publications: ENGRAVED GEMS From antiquity to the present Sidestone Press ENGRAVED GEMS From antiquity to the present edited by B.J.L. van den Bercken & V.C.P. Baan PALMA 14 PAPERS ON ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE LEIDEN MUSEUM OF ANTIQUITIES © 2017 Rijksmuseum van Oudheden; the individual authors PALMA: Papers on Archaeology of the Leiden Museum of Antiquities (volume 14) Published by Sidestone Press, Leiden www.sidestone.com Imprint: Sidestone Press Lay-out & cover design: Sidestone Press Photograph cover: Amethyst cameo with portrait of Minerva. Probably 16th century, set in gilded bronze ring. Inventory number GS-10100. Pictorial rights: The National Museum of Antiquities, Netherlands, explicitly wishes to honour the artists’ rights of persons or organisations to public presentation of images. The museum therefore adheres to the legal arrangements for this that are in place in the Netherlands. Despite the efforts done beforehand to find all picture right owners, any person or organisation claiming picture rights to images that are presented in this publication without their permission are invited to address the museum to support their claim. All pictures without credit mentioned are © Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, Leiden. With special thanks to Ruurd Halbertsma, Pieter ter Keurs, Robbert-Jan Looman, Lucas Petit. English correction: M. Hendricks (except chapter 1) ISBN 978-90-8890-505-6 (softcover) ISBN 978-90-8890-506-3 (hardcover) ISBN 978-90-8890-507-0 (PDF e-book) ISSN 2034-550X Contents Preface 7 Engraved gems in Leiden 9 Ben van den Bercken Roman gems in old collections and in modern archaeology 15 Martin Henig Cassandra on seals. Ring stone images as self-representation: an example 31 Marianne Kleibrink Some cameos in Leiden – Roman to neoclassicism 47 Gertrud Platz-Horster The Rijksmuseum van Oudheden’s original engraved gem collection: gem identification and applied research techniques 65 Hanco Zwaan and Christine Swaving An important collection of Mesopotamian cylinder seals 75 Diederik J.W. Meijer Sasanian seals: owners and reusers 85 Rika Gyselen Invocations to Hermes and Aphrodite on two engraved gems in Leiden 93 Attilio Mastrocinque The importance of gems in the work of Peter Paul Rubens 1577-1640 99 Marcia Pointon Post-classical cameos, their makers and users 113 Claudia Wagner Princely splendour: some cameo vessels from the middle of the seventeenth century and their patrons 123 Jørgen Hein “A treasure, a schoolmaster, a pass-time” Dactyliothecae in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and their function as teaching aids in schools and universities 131 Valentin Kockel Non grylloi, baskania sunt. On the significance of so-called grylloi/grilli or grylli in Greek and Roman glyptics 145 Carina Weiss Some unpublished scarabs from the Leiden collection 155 Ben van den Bercken Abstracts 163 Bibliography 167 Amethyst cameo with portrait of Minerva. Probably 16th century, set in gilded bronze ring. Inventory number GS-10100. Preface In 2013 a large collection of circa 4,300 engraved gems and circa 20,000 impressions was transferred from the former GeldMuseum in Utrecht to the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden in Leiden. This nearly quadrupled the amount of engraved gems in the Leiden collection and provided the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden with a valuable component of engraved gems and impressions from the sixteenth century and later. This group of objects greatly facilitates the growing field of interest in the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden known as the ‘reception of antiquity’. This field not only makes the connection of antiquity to the present visible, as stated in the museum mission, it also shows the development of this connection. Several contributions to this volume provide examples of how the past is relevant in understanding our present society and culture. The individual engraved gems enrich the departmental collections of the ancient Near East, Egypt, the Classical World and the Middle Ages. Several objects, such as the Gemma Constantiniana, the ‘Livia Cameo’ and the tureen of Amalia van Solms, are unique and rightfully called masterpieces. These pieces and many more took pride of place at the gem exhibition Splendour & precision on the subject of engraved gems, their makers, users and reusers. The conference From cylinder seals to Lippert’s dactyliotheca, held in Leiden on 2-4 November 2016, aimed to revive interest in the Leiden collection of engraved gems, presenting formerly unpublished material to international specialists and resulting in the present publication which is the first major publication on the col- lection since 1978. The Engraved Gems project, which started in winter 2013 with the arrival of the engraved gems in Leiden, and ended with the conference in November 2016, was made possible by a number of people. The project was supervised by Heikki Pauts, the pho- tographs were realized by Robbert-Jan Looman and the registration by Ben van den Bercken. The exhibitionSplendour & precision was supervised by Tanja van der Zon and the project curators Selkit Verberk and Ben van den Bercken. The latter together with Vivian Baan assumed the role of editors for this volume. The publication would not have been possible without the contributions made by the international specialists who have so generously participated in discussions about the gems in the Leiden collection. The round table discussion during the conference provided new material for discussion and further discoveries into the unknown and unpublished parts of the collection. Wim Weijland Director Rijksmuseum van Oudheden preface 7 Engraved gems in Leiden Ben van den Bercken* Introduction The definition of an engraved gem, especially its Dutch translation, gesneden steen, is an interesting topic for discussion. What exactly is an engraved gem? In the Nether- lands this discussion is almost 200 years old.1 It is therefore no surprise that numerous scholarly disciplines – (art) historians, archaeologists, Assyriologists, Egyptologists, gem- mologists, geologists, etc. – work with objects that qualify as engraved gems. In 2013 the collection of the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden (National Museum of Antiquities) in Leiden was enriched with the engraved gems and dactyliothecae from the former GeldMuseum (Money Museum) in Utrecht.2 This led to renewed interest in the study of engraved gems and the people behind them: their makers, users and reusers. The confer- ence From cylinder seals to Lippert’s dactyliotheca, held in Leiden on 2-4 November 2016, was not only a starting point for new studies on these topics, but also studies on formerly unpublished objects from the engraved gem collection. The eleven contributions to the conference and three additional contributions are published in this volume. Together they chart the chronological and geographical variety of the engraved gems in the Leiden collection and form the first of what we hope will be many new publications. A short history of the collection The ‘Koninklijk Penningkabinet van Munten, Penningen en Gesneden Steenen’ was founded by Royal Decree of 1 May 1816 by William I, King of the Netherlands. The Penningkabinet housed the collections of the former Stadholders and the collection of King Louis Napoleon, and was accommodated in the Royal Library (Koninklijke Bib- liotheek) in The Hague.3 In 1824, after several transfers and redistribution of objects in national collections, the Penningkabinet comprised 1,473 engraved gems, three-quar- ters of which were the original collection of the Stadholders who had purchased these from Count Frederik de Thoms (1696-1746).4 Other archaeological objects in the De Thoms collection also found their way into the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden.5 Between 1 Halbertsma 2003, 39-42. 2 As not all names of institutions mentioned translate easily into English, the institution names in this publication are generally given in their native language, for example, ‘Rijksmuseum van Oudheden’ instead of ‘National Museum of Antiquities’. * Ben van den Bercken is 3 For an overview of the history of the collection, see Van Kuyk 1946, Enno van Gelder / Reedijk / De Vries Assistant Curator Engraved 1967 and Maaskant-Kleibrink 1978. Gems, Rijksmuseum van 4 De Jonge 1823 and 1824. Oudheden, Leiden 5 Halbertsma 2003, 12-14. engraved gems in leiden 9 1816 and circa 1828 several larger collections of engraved gems were bought for the Fig.1 (left) The ‘De Smeth Penningkabinet.