Sassanian Seals

This semester my Middle Persian-Pahlavi language class has decided to finish deciphering a collection of Sassanian seals that was sent to my department for consultation. I'm in charge of providing our group with play-doh in order to 'stamp' the seals which can show us details that are difficult to see on the quartz surface. Many of the seals have Pahlavi inscriptions and our goal is to try to translate them into English. Translating may sound straightforward-- but if anyone has ever looked at the 'modified Imperial Aramaic' alphabet that Pahlavi uses, it's rarely straightforward because the shapes of the letters all look alike and tend to change over time. With play-doh, magnifying glasses, individual reading lights, and an enormous stack of reference books-- we could not look more nerdy. I love it, and below are some examples (from the internet) of what these artifacts look like.