Byzantine Seals from the National Museum of Ravenna

Among the 142 unpublished lead seals preserved in the National Museum of Ravenna, a small yet significant group consists of Byzantine specimens from different periods, spanning from the late sixth to the early thirteenth century. The collection was assembled by the Camaldolese monks of the Classe Monastery in the eighteenth century, and the provenance of the majority of its specimens can be traced to the Roman antiquities market of the same period. This paper presents the Byzantine seals from the Ravenna collection, introducing new findings and, where relevant, proposing revised datings for some specimens already documented in the main seal corpora. This small group of Byzantine seals includes specimens belonging to officials of the civil, military, and ecclesiastical administrations, as well as to Emperor Theodore I Laskaris, as discussed in an earlier presentation. For each seal, images, readings, dates, and historical commentary will be provided in light of recent research and their contexts of origin.