Published Catalogue Text: Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Bronzes at the Harvard Art Museums
This stamp takes the shape of a foot and preserves a border around the edges of the stamp plate. The handle attached to the back of the plate does not consist of a ring but is rounded and has a small circular perforation. The text of this stamp is incomprehensible. It may be possible to identify individual letters, but the sense of the text is impossible to decipher. This may be an example of the use of imitation alphabetic characters (1).
Each of the six Roman bronze stamps in the Harvard Art Museums consists of a plate, on which the die of the stamp is carved, and a ring, attached to the back of the plate, which serves as a handle for applying the stamp (2). With the exception of 1977.216.3250, Harvard’s stamps are approximately the same size (c. 5-6 cm long and 2-3 cm wide), and all are inscribed with text. Stamps were produced in a variety of shapes. Most are rectangular, but they could also be elliptical, circular, rhomboid, or in the shape of a tabella ansata, a foot, or, less commonly, a hand. Five of the six stamps in the Harvard Art Museums are rectangular. Four of these have two lines of writing inscribed on them; one other rectangular stamp contains a single line of text, which is limited to initials. The sixth stamp, 1977.216.1963, takes the shape of a foot and also has only one line of writing. This stamp appears to contain pseudo-alphabetic characters. Four others are inscribed in Latin, with the lettering raised and written backwards, a mirror image of the text the stamp would produce. 1977.216.3250 is inscribed in Greek letters but not written retrograde, meaning that the stamp’s impression would have been backwards.
Many types of objects in the ancient world bore stamped impressions, including amphorae, roof tiles, bricks, lamps, glass vessels, and terra sigillata (fine pottery). Textiles and bread were also sometimes stamped, and stamps like Harvard’s may have been used for such a purpose (3). Roof tiles and bricks were being stamped in Greece as early as the Archaic period. In the West, the earliest evidence for stamps comes from amphorae dated from the end of the fourth to the beginning of the third centuries BCE (4).
The texts of stamps most often refer to the name of the producer or manufacturer of the product in the genitive case (e.g., 1978.495.34 “of Cossinus Eutychianus”). In certain instances, the name is written using ligatures or abbreviations. Other stamps include an image such as a leaf (hedera) or an abstract pattern, while some stamps have writing in what seems to be an imitation of alphabetic characters, although it is clearly not Latin or Greek (5). In these cases, where the recipients of such goods were most likely illiterate, the presence of a stamp on the object may have sufficed to guarantee a certain level of quality. Stamps could have varying degrees of decoration along the border and may or may not have a horizontal element to divide separate lines of text (6). The extent a stamp was used varied according to workshop; certain workshops continued to use their stamps until the writing was no longer legible before replacing them (7).
NOTES:
1. G. Pucci, “Inscribed instrumentum and the ancient economy,” in Epigraphic Evidence. Ancient History from Inscriptions, ed. J. Bodel (New York, 2001) 137-90, esp. 144.
2. For similar stamps, see H. Dressel, ed., Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum XV: Instrumentum Domesticum (Berolini, 1891, 1899); M. Buoncuore, “Signacula nel Museo Profano della Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana,” Epigraphica 46 (1984): 158-67; and D. Manacorda, “Appunti sulla bollatura in età romana,” in The Inscribed Economy, ed. W. V. Harris (Ann Arbor, 1993) 37-54.
3. For more information on bread stamps, see C. L. Meyers and E. M. Meyers, “Another Jewish Bread Stamp?” Israel Exploration Journal 25.2-3 (1975): 154-55; and M. J. Milne “A Bronze Stamp from Boscoreale,” The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 25.9 (1930): 188, 190.
4. G. Pucci, “Inscribed instrumentum and the ancient economy,” in Epigraphic Evidence: Ancient History from Inscriptions, ed. J. Bodel (New York, 2001) 137-90, esp. 143.
5. Ibid., 144.
6. Compare A. Oxé, H. Comfort, and P. Kenrick, Corpus Vasorum Arretinorum: A Catalogue of the Signatures, Shapes and Chronology of the Italian Sigillata, 2nd edn. (Bonn, 2000) 529-34, for a classification of the various types of stamps for terra sigillata.
7. Ibid., 13.
Rebecca R. Benefiel
