Greek Coin Impressions from Ur

Abstract

One of the most intriguing finds made by Sir Leonard Woolley at Ur was a large number of seal impressions on clay the discovery of which he described in the Antiquaries Journal XII (1932) p. 389 as follows:“… in the uppermost levels there were found remains of the latest period in the city's history, ruins of private houses of the Persian age, and below their foundations the graves of the occupants of the houses. The house remains were scanty, scarcely ever sufficient to yield intelligible ground-plans, but it was clear that for the most part the buildings reproduced with minor alterations the houses of an earlier date whose walls were standing at a lower level. They produced no objects of importance, but the graves did yield a certain number of glazed vases, beads and seals. One clay coffin found in the low ground between the trenches, flush with the modern surface, proved very interesting. It had been plundered, and only a few fragments of bones and no clay or other vessels or beads were left in it, but at the bottom of the coffin there was a collection of nearly two hundred seal-impressions on clay. That these were really a collection was evident, for the lumps of soft clay had been pressed against the gems (the finger-marks were plain on the back and there was no hole through which a string could have been passed and had afterwards been baked so as to make the record permanent; they were illustrations of the specimens in a collector's cabinet.

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