Dr. Van Egmond began to collect cylinder and stamp seals as well as related artifacts from reputable dealers in the 1980’s, always careful to be confident of the source and provenance of each piece and also learning everything she could from the dealers and fellow collectors from whom she obtained these ancient objects. She collected a wide range of reference books in many languages and traveled the world visiting the great museums that held large Near Eastern collections with a special fondness for the British Museum in London, the Louvre in Paris and the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, carefully studying their holdings, talking with collection curators and seeking to identify major gaps in her holdings.

Dr. Van Egmond sought to assemble as widely representative a collection of seals as possible from the very limited choices available on the legitimate markets, seeking to be representative of the many regions, time periods, from the Uruk Period beginning some 6,000 years ago, up to the Neo- Assyrian and late cultures in the 8th and 9th Centuries BC, when such seals began to fall from common usage. She systematically sought out both the various artistic styles and materials utilized. She also carefully studied the cultural, religious, economic and political contexts in which these items were created, even mastering the very complicated cuneiform script from several key periods. It was her most sincere personal desire that the fruits of her many decades of collecting and research be shared as widely as possible in both an art history and scholarly context.