The departments of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures and Art History invite you to a talk by Professor Serdar Yalçin (Getty Villa Scholar/Art History, Macalester College) titled From One Hand to Another: Turbulent Lives of Cylinder Seals from Ancient Western Asia. The event will take place on Wednesday, December 4 at 4:00 pm in Kaplan 365. We hope to see you there!

Abstract: Generally made of precious stones and carved with detailed designs and pictorial images, cylinder seals constitute a unique group of artworks indigenous to ancient Mesopotamia. From the late fourth millennium BCE to the Hellenistic period, these intricately engraved objects were widely distributed across Western Asia, as they were commissioned and used by individuals, communities and institutions. This presentation will explore the fresh meanings and functions that these traveling objects gained in their new cultural habitats. Focusing on a small group of seals, which were initially made for elite Babylonians in the 14th and 13th centuries BCE but later acquired by people based in Assyria, Mycenean Greece and Transcaucasia, this study will investigate the appropriated seals’ shifting significance and usage, and the ways in which they participated in constructions of identities in those new cultural settings.

Bio: Dr. Serdar Yalçın is an associate professor of art history at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota, specializing in the art and archeology of ancient Western Asia and the Mediterranean world with a special focus on the Bronze and Iron Age cultures of
Mesopotamia, Syria and Anatolia. His research interests include art and identity, gender and representation, artistic interconnections in the ancient world, and western antiquarianism and the formation of the European and American antiquities collections.