In April 1999, the State Museum of Oriental Art opened the exhibition "Ancient Gems and Stones of the East" and held a seminar of the same name ¹ . The exhibition showed for the first time the most significant exhibits of the museum collection, which had just been allocated to a special fund. In the process of forming this fund, it turned out that at the turn of centuries and even millennia there is no concept or, if you will, no definition of what ancient gems of the East are. Traditionally, they include gems of Near-Asian and Hindustani origin, created before the middle of the first millennium BC, very rarely - Egyptian gems (here the concept of "Egyptian scarab" has become self-sufficient) and never-Carthaginian. Achaemenid gems, for the most part, are defined as products of the "East Ionian circle". Since the Hellenistic period, the vast majority of gems in the Eastern countries are perceived as ancient, i.e. made by Greek and Roman carvers or their more or less skilled students. Gems of the early Byzantine Empire are considered as a special world, where the theme and image go back and are connected exclusively with Christianity. In parallel with them, like a phoenix from the ashes, there are Sasanian gems, certainly eastern. In addition, during the entire millennium of the glyptic's existence, gems of ancient China (amulets, seals, signs of power) are located in a different space. This is the current situation in the science of Ancient Eastern glyptics.

The gap in the historical and cultural space of the ancient East in this area clearly hinders the concrete study of the material and its understanding as a whole. The GMW workshop is the first (as far as I know) attempt to overcome this situation. Publication of the seminar materials opens a round table in our journal ² .

¹ See Alpatkina T. G. Scientific seminar " Ancient gems and stones of the East "(Moscow, April 15-16, 1999) / / VDI. 2000. N 1. p. 234 sl.

² The seminar report presented by E. V. Antonova is published in VDI. 2000. N 2. pp. 46-52.

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