sigmund freud's collection an archaeology of the mind

Cylinder seal (+ clay impression)
Old Babylonian, c.19th–18th century BC
hematite, 2.6 x 1.5 cm
LDFRD 4243
Collection Freud Museum London
Bertha Pappenheim, known in her case study as Anna O, was an early
patient of Josef Breuer, Freud’s colleague. She dubbed psychoanalysis
‘the talking cure.’ 1 Fascinated by language and antiquity, Freud
collected examples of writing’s earliest forms. Cylinder seals were
developed in southern Mesopotamia (now Iraq) and southwestern Iran
to record business transactions and authenticate documents. The
pictographs were the ‘signatures’ of dignitaries, offi cials and traders.
In Babylon, scribes did most of the writing on tablets of soft clay. The
tablet was then ‘signed’ by rolling a cylinder seal across it. The seals
provide a lasting record of Babylonian culture.
This exquisite seal was made during the reign of Hammurabi
(1793-1750 BC) who established Babylon as a major kingdom. Made
of hematite, a hard, long lasting iron oxide stone, the seal shows
Shamash, the bearded sun god who dispensed law and justice, resting
one foot on his attribute animal, a human-headed bull, while the king,
facing Shamash, raises his hands in supplication. Behind Shamash
stands a priest on a dais while standing behind the king is a goddess
wearing a horned head-dress, perhaps Aya, goddess of the dawn and
Shamash’s consort. As Dominique Collon, British Museum, notes,
‘The sun god Shamash was and remained the most popular deity in
Mesopotamia.’ 2 The clay impression was made in 1989.
Freud believed that the events of early childhood determined an
individual’s destiny, so perhaps it is no surprise that he collected
objects from the childhood of civilisation.
1. ‘[Anna O] aptly described this procedure, speaking seriously as a ‘talking cure’ while she
referred to it jokingly as ‘chimney-sweeping’. Sigmund Freud, Studies on Hysteria, (1893-
1895), S.E., vol.II, p.30.
2. Dominque Collon, First Impressions, Cylinder Seals in the Near East, British Museum
Publications, London, c.1987, p.167.
10