Babylonian cylinder sells for $500,000

Anne Crane, 'Babylonian cylinder sealed at $500,000' Antiques Trade Gazette 14 April 2014

The  21cm cuneiform clay barrel cylinder from the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon (604-562BC) which I wrote about here earlier being sold by Doyle in New York ended in it reaching $500,000 (£312,500)

The price on April 9, paid by a phone bidder, was at the upper end of a $300,000-500,000 estimate. Almost exactly three years ago, on April 13, 2011, Bonhams sold another barrel cylinder from Nebuchadnezzar's reign with cuneiform relating to the same subject in their London rooms for £220,000. Bonhams' version was smaller at 5.25in (13.3cm), with 18 lines of text, and had a different provenance. It had been deaccessioned by a New England museum who acquired it in the 1990s, but prior to that had belonged to the archaeologist and diplomat Dr Edgar Banks who was field director of the Babylonian Expedition and American Consul to Baghdad in 1937.