Another Semeion? New Perspectives on an Old Syrian Seals Group

Ideas do not have any physical or temporal borders. Thus, beliefs and religious thoughts could have survived through time in many different aspects. Faiths could have been evolved, transformed and conserved in different ways. Seyrig proved it in his research,1 when he published a study about a cylinder seals corpus that belongs to the 2nd millennium BC. This corpus presents a standard that consists of a pole that bears two human heads and that is topped by a bird. Seyrig supposed that the standard with the two human heads might be the Semeion (“Σημήϊον”) mentioned in the De Dea Syria, written in the 2nd century AD.2 This paper presents a group of cylinders, engraved in Cursive style, spread at the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC. A standard is depicted in the scenes of these cylinders. This standard is different from the standard of the two human heads. Here, the standard is simple and generally, consists of a pole, and a platform which supports a bird. This paper also proposes that these cylinders could represent the Semeion and mentions as well that this standard is possibly still alive through contemporary faiths.