Validating the imprinting through presence and properties in Old Babylonian period

In the ancient Near East, the seal is a mean of documentary validation and a marker of personhood. This article wants to discuss the performative role of the seal. The power of each personal seal seems that to transmit properties inherent in the object through the act of imprinting because it is a traceable action and its owner is present. The seal, therefore, can be considered ‘the person himself ’ even after the end of his physical body because sigillum manet. This celebratory volume is the occasion to discuss the nexus between persona and artefacts focusing attention on the body as locus of the experience integrated in a material world. I offer this contribution to the memory of Pierre Amiet, a leading scholar who has devoted much of his scientific activity to the study of glyptics and the relationship between Mesopotamian culture and its material expression.