Religion(s) in Seals

Although seals are very mobile items and often reused, and although they can be regarded as mass media products given their large distribution in time, space, and different social classes, they are often used by scholars as a tool to map political, cultural, and religious borders. This contribution aims at reassessing the validity of using religious iconography on seals from the first-millennium BCE southern Levant for the study of ancient religion(s) from three aspects: that religion is thematized beyond ethnic borders; that religious motifs are studied beyond the quest of their origin; and that divine images are studied beyond the compulsion to provide them with proper names. Introducing the notion of adaption as a short form for adoption and adaptation, this article supports a more nuanced understanding of seal iconography in terms of shared cultural infrastructure and a common cultural landscape.