The study of Babylonian Jewry in the Sasanian era has typically been a one-source field, with the Babylonian Talmud serving as that single primary source. The growing number of published incantation bowls written in this period and region by Jews has worked lately to nuance this image. Recent decades have also seen the discovery and identification of Jewish seals from this area, providing an additional and somewhat different, albeit limited, material resource for studying Babylonian Jewry. Seals were used in antiquity much as identification cards or signatures are today, and they were generally possessed by the more important people. They usually had little more than a name and an image on them, the images being typically stylized, suggesting limited choices.

With the growing interest in Sasanian seals in recent decades, Shaul Shaked took it upon himself to systematically catalogue the Jewish ones. In 1977, he published a description of eleven Jewish seals, of which eight can be reasonably ascribed to the Sasanian era.Footnote ¹ In a subsequent article, he added five more, including a most interesting seal having the name Huna bar Natan, the same name as an important fourth- and fifth-century Amora, who was identified by Rav Sherira Gaon as an exilarch.Footnote ² That seal was discussed in an important Hebrew article by Moshe Beer in 1983.Footnote ³ A third article, by Shaked, in 1995, added twelve additional seal specimens, bringing the total to twenty-five.Footnote ⁴ The volume under review is justifiably, if oddly, “dedicated to the brilliant scholarship of Professor Shaul Shaked.”

The book presents to the reader, according to the blurb on the inside jacket leaf, “fifty-seven Jewish seals from the Sasanian Empire, as well as comparative Zoroastrian and Christian seals.” The title indicates the aspirations of this volume: to probe the relationship between Babylonian Jewry and Sasanian culture. Initially, knowledge of the appearance of a volume on this subject, published by a university press, accompanied by the approbations of certain scholars (albeit none otherwise known to have contributed to this specialized field), was greeted by this reviewer with high expectations. The book claims to present, after all, well over double the number of previously known Jewish Sasanian seals. Following a short introduction by Norman Golb, this slim volume contains brief surveys of Sasanian history and the Jewish academies; short discussions of the Jewish names on the seals, the nature and function of Sasanian seals, and Old Testament themes; and, finally, descriptions of fifty-seven seals, arranged in the following manner: seals of the lulav and etrog, the binding of Isaac, human figures, animals, and other life forms, family devices, miscellaneous and dubious seals, fantasy seals on the theme of the binding of Isaac, and Daniel in the lion's den. Finally, there is a curt conclusion on the “specific character of the known Sasanian Jewish seals.” The book contains a bibliography and a general index.

Unfortunately, the author is evidently unqualified to publish and discuss this material. He has little understanding of the historical and cultural context of Sasanian Jewry, and his knowledge of the specialist field of sigillography is only slightly better. The surveys and discussions introducing the actual seals are inaccurate, ignorant, and dated. The Hebrew scholarship in this field is absent. Golb's introduction reads better as a description of Islamic than Sasanian Babylonia, and when he does glance back to the Sasanian era, his description knows of nothing written on this field after World War II.

The number of Jewish seals is not fifty-seven. The author has included twenty-three seals that are probably or certainly not Jewish. He has also included Shaked's twenty-five. Thus, when all is said and done, this volume presents the reader with nine more Jewish Sasanian seals than were included in Shaked's 1995 article; six that were previously unpublished; and three more. One of these three, no. 48 has a Kufic inscription and so is not Sasanian. So in sum, we have eight new seals: nos. 8, 11, 13, 32, 36, 39, 40, and 41. The non-Jewish seals are included to illustrate cultural context, but not all of them actually belong to the Sasanian era or empire. Nos. 49, 50, and 51 are post-Sasanian variants on the theme of the binding of Isaac, and no. 21 is Roman with a Latin inscription.

The seals are generally presented with disappointingly small and often unclear photographs. The index is incomplete. The author's discussion of the seals is generally uninformed and often meanderingly irrelevant. Thus, for a seal with the name אבוא, after recording Shaked's comment that it might be a variant of the name אביי, he remarks as follows: “Abba is sometimes used as an epithet for God, and is also used as such in the Talmud. Jacob Neusner in Israel and Iran in Talmudic Times refers several times to an Abayye, a mid-fourth century amora” (29). The author's reliance on the scholarship that he cites, whether Shaked, Lerner, or others, is almost total, but still he commits havoc. For instance, the reconstructed title [אר[כון becomes for him “Arcohen, Chief Priest” (54). The seals already discussed in Shaked's articles are included here to little advantage. His rare departures from Shaked are to the writer's detriment (e.g., no. 42). Numerous Christian seals published by Judith Lerner are included here, similarly with little to add. As for the already known Jewish ones, the author is justified in questioning the given reading of the inscription on perhaps the earliest specimen, published by Mordtmann in 1864, and indeed, its identity as Jewish Sasanian, as well as that of no. 8, which has the slogan אמת ושלם. The author has sometimes solicited expert advice to advantage (33) and sometimes to disadvantage (43, 55). The script in nos. 36 and 41 is quite odd and should be treated with suspicion. The inclusion of no. 47 may also be questioned, as it is a Byzantine lead, possibly made under the influence of the brief Sasanian occupation in the early seventh century, and so does not reflect Sasanian Jewry.

What can be said about Babylonian Jewry in light of these seals? The names in the new seals are strikingly in tune with those encountered in the Babylonian Talmud (the book lacks an index of proper names): יהודה ‎,יצחק ‎,עוקבא ‎,שמואל ‎,פאפא‎,לוי ‎,שמעון ‎,יעקב‎, and so on. Sure, Yitshaq bar Yehudah (no. 32) is the name of a late third-century Babylonian Amora, but the recurrent nature of these names opposes the identification of these seals with known talmudic personalities. We might take note that we have yet to encounter one seal with the honorifics rabbi and mar (but no. 3 recalls יהודה מר‎), although this is hardly the kind of detail one might expect to be overlooked. The symbols suggest contact with the Jewish iconography prevalent in the Roman Empire, but not a free borrowing. The incense shovel, shofar, and lulav and etrog are very typical symbols in Roman Jewish iconography, and there is no need to seek special meaning for these (such as a personal affiliation to the priesthood). The lulav also comes close to the Zoroastrian barsom. The absence of the menorah is interesting. There are human images and scenes close to those typical of Zoroastrians and Christians, but we cannot know whether these are attributable to the “limited repertory of themes”Footnote ⁵ because of the insufficient skill of the craftsmen, or to “great cultural assimilation” (62).

In sum, this volume should never have been allowed. But now that it is here, its value is confined to its publication of half a dozen new Jewish Sasanian seals, but the author's descriptions and discussion must be avoided at all costs.