Eugenia Gerousi-Bendermacher, Hellenic Ministry of Culture

The Paul and Alexandra Canellopoulos Museum is situated on the north slope of the Athenian Acropolis and exhibits a fascinating collection of about 6500 ancient and Byzantine treasures, which highlight the continuity and uninterrupted unity of Greek art. The Byzantine collection comprises various objects of miniature art, jewellery, gold and silver coins, processional crosses, blessing and processional crosses from the early Christian period to the recent times, as well as icons dating from the 14th to the 17th century. The collection presents among other objects a group of lead seals, four of which have been published by V. Laurent in BCH 1973. The lead seals of the collection, of unknown provenance unfortunately, as is the case of most seal collections, can be dated to the time period between the 7th century and the middle Byzantine era, and remain basically unpublished. This paper aims to present some of those seals which are of special interest and offer new data: a) on prosopography, since they preserve names of well-known byzantine families active for several generations such as the Glavas family and the Branas family, b) the hierarchy of political and military personnel with the names and titles of Byzantine magistrates preserved, such as Gregoras imperial kourator, Leon hypatos, Leon patrikios, Konstantinos kouropalates, imperial kandidatos, and c) on persons and church titles, such as patriarchs. Some lead seals display also a religious iconography, dominated by the figure of Virgin Mary of different types like the “Blachernitissa”, as well as other saints, such as Saint Procopios. Inscriptions in verse are also preserved, as in the case of a text in seven verses mentioning the hymn of “Agia Skepi”, during the celebration of which the maphorion of Virgin Mary was venerated.