Bamboula (…“Seal impressions…”) Benson 1955Jack L. Benson

Sh 615 (Fig. 17 Pl. ; Fig. 18 Pl. ) is a fragment from the rim of a large wheelmade pithos, or urn, a ratio

18.

The rim has been greatly thickened and appears to have been slightly [handwritten: covered] in position. It is profiled somewhat in the manner of a cornice, with a slight lateral depression delineating it from the wall of the vessel. The thickening and flattening of the rim provides an ample, almost flat surface on which to impress a design. [handwritten: no pmns. here!] The clay, is gray-blue to light gray-brown throughout, but fired at the surface light pinkish-brown with gray-blue spots. It is exceptionally well cleaned for pithos ware with only occasional larger grits but numerous small white particles. The surface is well smoothed for the most part. While different from the fabrics discussed above, this sherd does not look non-Cypriote.

Impressed while damp on the top inner side of the rim, in rather high relief, is an apparently continuous frieze, made perhaps by a matrix (see below). Only the upper part of the design is extant, the lower part having been struck off in a shallow fracture of the angulation between rim surface and inner wall. At first glance the design appears to consist of running spirals. A minute inspection of the sherd, while not entirely excluding the possibility, does not substantiate it, either, particularly because there is then no explanation for the cross-bar.

It is, in fact, almost certain that the design consists of imperfectly made concentric circles (an inner and an outer) in groups (perhaps of two) interrupted at intervals by a vertical bar crossed at the top and possibly also at the bottom. The estimated height of the design is 1.9 cm. and it may be restored as in Fig. 19 Pl. . The upper edge of the design is a slight ridge of clay thrown up in a somewhat uneven manner by the rolling, but still quite unlike what [handwritten: me] would expect from the rolling of an ordinary cylinder seal.