Egyptian Iconography on Syro-Palestinian Cylinder Seals of the Middle Bronze Age

Abstract

This book seeks to contribute to the history of Syria-Levant in the Middle Bronze Age by assessing Egyptian “influence” and Syro-Levantine perceptions of Egypt through an analysis of the use of Egyptian imagery in Syro-Levantine cylinder seal iconography. This includes an evaluation of the nature and composition of Syrian glyptic as a whole. The book concludes that Egyptian imagery, although inspirational, owed nothing to Egyptian political or religious influence in Syria. Rather, this imagery was assimilated coherently into an integral Syrian glyptic repertoire, which was an expression of the political stability and cultural autonomy of Syria in the Middle Bronze Age. The smaller cylinder seal evidence from the Lebanon and Palestine also reflects these region’ political and cultural status quo: strong Egyptian influence in the Lebanon and an ambivalent situation in Palestine.

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