Collecting seals and scarabs is a worldwide hobby of many people. Unfortunately many offered objects, especially on Ebay, are fakes. (See Menu: Fakes on Ebay) The authentic pieces very often are looted from Near Eastern sites. Nevertheless collecting these objects is possible and a very interesting subject so why not sharing some of our pieces with the public on this webpage ? Of course it can't show a full development of Near Eastern seals and scarabs. Only a few chosen items are shown to give the expert, scientist and collector some hints to compare and maybe to do further research. You will find information on this website that will help you to identify fakes and the sellers of forgeries.
Many scarabs in my collection came from Israeli collections. In the late Bronze Age this region was an Egyptian border province and Egyptian officials, soldiers and most probably their families lived in the garrisons in Canaan. Many of my scarabs have close Ramessid parallels from Israel for example from the cemetery of Tell el-Farah (South) in Israel where graves of the Ramessid time (19th/20th Dyn.) have been excavated. A very interesting time in history as it witnessed the struggle between the empires of Egypt and the Hittites and later the invasion of the Sea Peoples.
There is a gallery with faked, dubious and problematic seals and scarabs on this website. Many of these items have an unknown provenance and were sent to me by other collectors. See menu "Fake Gallery" http://www.seal-collector.de/pageID_5325611.html
In June 2011 even seals accompanied by faked Lambert notes appeared on Ebay.co.uk :
http://www.seal-collector.de/fakes-on-ebay.html
This web-page was created with the kind assistance of Dr. Sylvia Winkelmann, archeologist and specialist for Near Eastern and Central Asian archaeology.And here is a comment from Dr. Winkelmann on these seals in my fake gallery.(Email from July 6th 2011) She kindly gave me permission to publish it:
"Very helpful, your analysis of the faked cylinder seals. I fully agree."
I wish to thank the galleries and collectors who gave me the permission to publish their seals and scarabs.
O. Sprenger
