Butuan Ivory Seal

Discovery

Another archaeological piece with ancient inscription, the Butuan Ivory Seal was recovered in the 1970s by pot hunters in a prehistoric shell midden site in Ambangan, Libertad, Butuan in Agusan del Norte. Made of ivory, the object could have been used to stamp documents or goods during trading.

The ivory seal as well as other archaeological materials recovered in Ambangan archaeological sites are proof that Rajahnate of Butuan was an important trading center whose official seal marked the source of commodities it produced and exported.

Transcription

The Kawi lettering reads "Butwan". The three square seal style characters are BA, TA and NA; the leftward curl underneath BA is the /u/ vowel diacritic, changing the syllable to BU; the small heart-shaped character under TA is the subscript conjunct form of WA which also removes the default /a/ vowel from TA; the large curl to the upper right is the Kawi virama, which indicates the default /a/ vowel on NA is not pronounced. The three blocks of characters together read "[Bu][Twa][N-]."