A lot of 2 Sasanian seals, 3rd - 5th Century AD. The first is of carnelian, domes with suspension hole, the base with a horned antelope, star above, W: 12mm. The second is in agate, and depicts a standing male figure facing left, W: 19mm. Both intact. Ex Edgar Banks, UK, gifted in the 1920's. Edgar James Banks (May 23, 1866 – May 5, 1945). American diplomat, antiquarian and novelist. Banks was an antiquities enthusiast and entrepreneurial roving archaeologist in the closing days of the Ottoman Empire, who has been held up as an original for the fictional composite figure of Indiana Jones. Starting from his position as American consul in Baghdad in 1898, Banks bought hundreds of cuneiform tablets on the market in the closing days of the Ottoman Empire and re-sold them in small batches to museums, libraries, universities, and theological seminaries, several in Utah and the American Southwest and across the United States. These tablets had been dug up by locals at sites like Telloh and the many other tells of central Mesopotamia. Banks purchased many more cuneiform inscriptions from a dealer in Istanbul. The Ottoman government did not regulate the trade in such minor antiquities. Though he had been funded for an expedition to the site of Ur, Banks was foiled by the Ottoman administration, who would not permit digs at Babylon or Tell Ibrahim, other prominent sites. In 1903 it was decided that his excavations were to be at Bismya, the site of ancient Adab, in Iraq. His 1912 publication about his excavations at Bismya/Bismaya (Adab), the Sumerian city now in Iraq, contains some lively accounts of his struggles with the Ottoman bureaucracy In 1909 Banks became a professor of Oriental languages and archaeology at the University of Toledo.[1] After World War I, Banks travelled and lectured extensively, scattering his cuneiform tablets among purchasers wherever he went. Tablets Banks sold to Charles W. Ames are now in the Science Museum at the University of Minnesota and many other private and public sites in the U.S.