Remediation of leakage of the hydraulic block presses MAC Master

The best way to prevent unplanned downtime of production machines is certainly adherence to the principles of preventive maintenance. In case of extremely difficult working conditions and the contaminated working environment of the machine, a major maintenance intervention is required. This involves not only the replacement of worn parts, but also design changes, the use of other materials or shapes, such as hydraulic cylinder seals. Such a major intervention often also presents a major logistical and organizational challenge. As such an example, the paper presents the reconstruction of an older special press for the production of molds for casting and is still of key importance for the production of the company. The challenge was to renovate a special hydraulic block with 63 hydraulic rollers mounted in a 9 x 7 matrix, which, in addition to the appropriate force for sand compaction in all molds, must also ensure flawless compression parallelism.

ANALYSIS OF CYPRUS ARCHEOLOGICAL CYLINDER SEAL VISUALS

People have tried to determine their "personality" and "property" rights by using special signs and symbols since ancient times. These symbols are the signs that people who lived together and formed a community in the conditions of that day that they agreed on. One of the human-made tools, on which these special personality and property markers appear are cylinder seals. Different expressions were made besides determining personality and property by means of text and images engraved on cylinder seals. In this research, cylinder seals, which are archaeological artifacts in the island of Cyprus, exhibited in museums and may be subject to the relevant literature were examined. The seals that make up the sample consist of cylinder seals exhibited in Cyprus archaeological museums, in the British Museum, Metropolitan Museum and the Cyprus artifacts sections of the John Hopkins Museum. The cylinder seals used by the communities and governments that have dominated Cyprus in the historical process have been investigated as visual imagery. Therefore, images on cylinder seals produced in Cyprus or neighbouring cultures between 2000 BC and 600 BC were investigated. In this research, the engravings on seals that were produced in neighbouring cultures and brought to Cyprus as a gift or were imported also examined. All figures made on the seals were produced in neighbouring cultures and brought to the island with different methods were also included in the study. In this context, the features of the motif, figure, inscription, decoration and patterns used on 191 cylinder seals obtained during the research process were investigated. As a result of the examination, figures which engraved on the seals was coded in accordance with their themes, all the images engraved on the seals were divided into categories. Six main categories were determined as a result of categorical division. Twenty-seven themes belonging to the identified main six categories were also determined. Among the scrapings on the cylinder seals that constitute the sample of the research; visuals that determine the variety of food production, agriculture, mining, blessing and sacrifice scenes, and demonstrating the scenes of a birthday of the seal owner were encountered. From the pictures drawn on the cave walls, it is known that such special signs or images serving different purposes were used. In this context, the fact that only pictorial images were engraved on some of the cylinder seals reveals the view that they existed before the writing and that the tradition of that period continued on the seal engraving after the writing was found.

The Materiality of Cylinder Seals

In the 1980ies Dr. Julia Asher-Greve conducted chemical and mineralogical material analysis on cylinder seals as a part of her SNF-funded project „Naturwissenschaftliche und typologische Untersuchungen an Rollsiegeln“. 1017 seals have been analysed using the non-destructive methods of EDS-XFA (energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence analysis) for chemical classification and XRF (X-ray diffraction) for mineralogical classification. This was one of the first large scale projects on Mesopotamian glyptic with its main focus on materiality rather than style, iconography or inscription as was usually the case when working on cylinder seals. Since then much work on the materiality of seals has been done, mostly by institutions such as the British Museum. This is because those institutions have access to large seal corpora and they either have the funds to pay for the costly analysis or possess the means to analyse the seals themselves. As I ‘inherited’ the unfinished project of Dr. Asher-Greve including the analysis (which still need to be interpreted), I am painfully aware of the difficulties and problems to be encountered with such old analysis. In my 10-minute talk I will give an insight to the chances and limitations of scientific material analysis on archaeological artefacts. For especially small and precious objects like cylinder seals need to be treated with the uttermost care and under no circumstances should they take damage in the process of being analysed.

Seals and scarabs

Sealing and stamping was an important part of Egypt’s daily life. Royal and official institutional seals played a significant role in the administration of the state and in the hierarchical system. Seals of individual officials, private persons, and families not only marked personal property, but could define the position of the owner in the society, as well. Besides such real seals, amulet seals and pseudo-seals exist, which have no administrative function and were not made for sealing. Egyptian seal-devices are divided into two main types: cylinder and stamp seals. The Egyptians used cylinder seals since the Predynastic period; they were particularly popular during the Old Kingdom for royal, administrative, and private use. Stamp seals were developed in the late Old Kingdom. They have either a geometrical or a figurative top, and a flat bottom, which is inscribed, figuratively decorated, or ornamented with patterns. Figurative seals are either zoomorphic or anthropomorphic, and usually depict icons, such as heads or full figures; they also display motifs, particularly figurative pairs or small groups. The most famous figurative type was the scarab and scarab-related parallel types with oval bases, such as scaraboids (with figurative, regularly curved, non-scarab back) and cowroids (with cowry shell shaped back). Special scarab types with specific functions emerged over time, for example, heart scarabs, winged scarabs, or pectorals with scarab centrepiece.

The Akkadian Cylinder Seal – Metonym for Life in Akkad

Akkadian cylinder seals, though tiny physical objects, were useful and significant to the Akkadians. This work explores those uses and significances in order to understand the cultural complexity reflected in these small items. Religious scenes on cylinder seals detail the spiritual beliefs and practices of the time. The deeply intertwined relationship between religion and state power in Akkad is also present in the decorations of some cylinder seals. The materials from which cylinder seals are made indicate trade with distant groups and signal the passage of both materials and cultural influences between groups. These cylinder seals also reflect the complexities of daily life; politics, distribution of resources, the specialization of craftspeople, and art can all be read in these minute cylinders. As well, the making of cylinder seals was a technologically complex process, demonstrating sophistication of technique and of material choice that points to the sophistication of the people who made them. Ultimately, these physical and social properties of cylinder seals indicate that they had multiple meanings in the life of Akkadians.

Corpus Asher-Greve. Dealing with "Data form the Past"

SNF-Project (1.722-0.83): Naturwissenschaftliche und typologische Untersuchungen an Rollsiegeln. When? 1983-1986 Who? Dr. Julia Asher-Greve and Prof. Dr. Willem Stern, University of Basel Material? 1017 cylinder seals from Mesopotamia and neighbouring regions covering all periods from Uruk to Achaemenid period. What? XRD (X-ray diffraction) -> mineralogical composition EDXRF (energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence) -> chemical composition Iconographical typology Project couldn’t be brought to an end, data not interpreted PhD-Project based on the corpus and analyses of the project Asher-Greve When? 2017-2020 (?) Who? Nicole Gäumann Material? Same What? Interpretation of XRD- and EDXRF from previous project Further analyses on existing powder samples (?) Typology Bringing together the results of the material analyses and the archaeological data, the material ought to be interpreted in terms of connections between material, colour, dating, provenance, theme, owner…

Small Finds, Big Values: Cylinder Seals and Coins from Iraq and Syria on the Online Market

Discussions about looted antiquities often focus on large, culturally and monetarily valuable items. Nevertheless, it is clear that mundane small finds, which sell for relatively small amounts, account for a large portion of the global market in antiquities. This article highlights two types of small artifacts—namely, cylinder seals and coins, presumed to come from Syria and Iraq and offered for sale by online vendors. We argue that the number of cylinder seals and coins sold on the Internet has increased steadily since 2011, reaching a peak in 2016–17. This shows that the trade in Iraqi and Syrian antiquities has shifted from big-ticket items sold in traditional brick-and-mortar shops to small items readily available on the Internet for modest prices. The continuing growth of the online market in antiquities is having a devastating effect on the archaeological sites in Iraq and Syria as increasing demand fuels further looting in the region.