The Power of Clay: Communication, World-Building, and the Materiality of Religion in Hellenistic Babylonian Seal Impressions and Figurines

The visual arts of Hellenistic Babylonia and the Hellenistic period provide evidence of considerable cultural and religious interaction. This is typically studied through analysis of style and motif, rather than materiality. In contrast, this paper explores how the use of clay as a material impacted the discursive potential, visual diversity, and religious meanings of miniature artworks, particularly seal impressions and terracotta figurines, from the Hellenistic period in Babylonia (southern Iraq, c. 330 BCE – 200 CE). Although clay had been an important substance throughout Mesopotamian history, this paper will argue that the communicative and creative possibilities of clay were heightened during the Hellenistic period due to the introduction of alternative technologies and multiple choices for visual representation. The accentuation of clay as a material opened new potentials for social world-building and identity construction. Seals owned by Greek people, and bearing Greek motifs, pressed into the clay of a cuneiform tablet extended Greek personhood and cultural background into Babylonian space, but in a manner legible and subordinated to Babylonian values and priorities. The use of clay figurines was a rare overlap in cultural practice – this clay welcomed both Greeks and Babylonians into the mutual shaping of social identity, in contrast to how the architectural clay of Babylonian ziggurats and temples reinforced the primacy of local traditions in official cult practice. Overall, this paper will argue that clay in Hellenistic Babylonia was not just a medium for meaning-transmission, but a mode of communication and religious practice in and of itself.