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Haematite Height: 2.6 cm 
The nineteenth and eighteenth centuries BC witnessed a tremendous
increase in legal, administrative and scribal activity, and a
corresponding increase in the need for seals to witness contracts or
seal goods and storerooms. The designs of seals at this period are
remarkably consistent, with a limited range of figures which could be
combined according to certain rigid conventions. Here we see the
bearded sun deity as god of justice and omens, equipped with a
saw-toothed knife with which to cut his way through the mountains of
the east at dawn. Before him stands the king, offering an animal,
while behind stands a kilted priest. Above are the combined symbols
of the main astral bodies-sun-disk, star, and crescent moon. A
cuneiform inscription running from top to bottom of the seal was
erased in antiquity by a new owner. The unrolled cast of the design
exhibited with the seal was probably made by Freud himself.
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