Lasting Impressions Module
Throughout Byzantium’s long history its people used lead seals to guard and authenticate documents and objects. The designs and inscriptions pressed into seals were personalized by their owners to present information about their status, position, piety, and family. They are decorated with a great variety of religious and secular imagery and intricate inscriptions, all chosen by the individuals who owned them for very personal reasons. Each seal is a testament to someone living in the Byzantine Empire and no other single source provides so much information about such a broad range of individual Byzantines.
The exhibition
Lasting Impressions: People, Power, Piety
The Online Exhibit
Each lead seal is a small witness to an individual Byzantine and how they chose to present themselves. In exploring what seal owners said about themselves and how designs changed over a millennium we can explore the world in which Byzantines, from empresses to bathhouse attendants, lived. No other single source provides so much information about such a broad range of individual Byzantines. The online exhibit explores how seals were used and by whom, the imagery and text individuals used to represent themselves, and how historians work with seals today. Explore the online exhibit here.
