Cylinder seal decorated with a presentation scene. Head... Lot 17

Cylinder seal decorated with a presentation scene. Head turned to the right and wearing a bonnet, a man wearing a two-row sash with his sex exposed, raises his right arm in adoration. Opposite him is a man wearing a cap and wearing a belt, performs a coitus a tergo with a naked woman. Leaning forward, she drinks from a jug placed on the ground; her arm and waist are grabbed by the male figure. by the male figure. Below the woman's bust, a miniature figure is holding the jug on one knee. In the field, above the woman, a star motif on a crescent. Behind the speaker, two vertical lines of cuneiform inscriptions. Paleo-Babylonian period, early 2nd millennium B.C. Carnelian. H. 1.8 cm ES Provenance: private collection, United Kingdom. Of the greatest rarity. This iconography finds parallels in the corpus of terracotta reliefs from the Palaeo-Babylonian period of the early 2nd millennium BC. the one in the Vorderasiatisches Museum in Berlin (VA Bab 3576-BAb 29608). Associated with brothels and taverns, but also with the ritual of "sacred marriage" or hierogamy, these plates were probably used in magical ceremonies intended to increase sexual power (note 1). Even if it remains debated (note 2), the drink contained in the jar is most probably beer, a drink that, unfiltered, would have been beer, a drink which, unfiltered, had to be drunk through a straw to remove its impurities. In glyptics, the iconographic repertoire of the Early Palaeo-Babylonian period consists essentially of scenes of presentation to deities (note 3). The erotic scene in front of the orant must therefore be interpreted as that of a hierogamic union. This reading is reinforced by the presence of the divine attribute that is the crescent containing the starry disk, attribute located above of the group. Our cylinder also shows certain details characteristic of glyptics of this period, such as the theme of the naked woman, who is usually represented from the front with her arms folded at the waist. waist, this goddess seems, according to D. Collon (note 4), associated with a fertility cult (note 5). We can then easily consider that our scene, certainly more suggestive, is a variant in the representation of this fertility cult. The small kneeling figure holding the jar can also be found on other seals of this period, such as n° 111 and n°122 of the Chiha collection, or on the lapis lazuli seal of Sin-Ishmeanni (British Museum, inv. 134757). Finally, we find the clothing detail of the two-row belt on the figure of the orant presented on the aforementioned cylinder from the Chiha collection (no. 122). Note 1 : see catalogue Babylon, Louvre, 2008, under the direction of B. André-Salvini, page 93. Note 2 : see Catherine Breniquet, Drinking beer with a torch in Me?sopotamia during the protodynastic era, in Cahier des thé?mes transversaux ArScAn (vol. IX) 2007 - 2008 Note 3 : see C. Doumet in sceaux et cylindres orientaux : la collection Chiha, page 61. Note 4: see D. Collon in Catalogue of the Western Asiatic Seals in the British Museum, volume 3, p/131,132 Note 5: see C. Doumet in Oriental seals and cylinders: the Chiha collection, page 68, num.122