Introduction

A clear indication of the appraisal was the fact that the first international colloquium on Byzantine sigillography was held at Dumbarton Oaks/Georgetown University in August 1986, during the Seventeenth International Congress of Byzantine Studies. Lead seals received their impressions from a boulloterion. This tool, in use as early as the 4th century, was a pliers-shaped iron implement, incised in reverse on the inner surfaces of its two hammer-like jaws. Among the vast body of surviving lead seals, the largest portion are seals that have no iconographic motif but only inscriptions. Many of these bear monograms of various forms; others have bilateral inscriptions, many with elaborate, learned metrical inscriptions. The relationship of sphragistic iconography to that of the minor arts was taken up by Alicia Bank when comparing the paired images of military saints found on both seals and steatite carvings.