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The imperial kommerkia of Thrace and Hexamilion (751-775)

 
 

Obverse

Two imperial busts: Constantine V (left), bearded, and Leo IV, beardless, each wearing chlamys and crown (only partially imprinted). Linear border.

Reverse

Imperial bust above an exergual line: Leo III (only partially visible) wearing loros. Below the line, an inscription of four lines. Linear border.

ΩΝΒ/ΚΟΜΜΕΡ
Κ/ΤΗΣΘΡΑΚΗ
ΣΤΟΥΕΞΑ
ΜΙ.ΙΟΥ

Τῶν βασιλικῶν κομμερκίων τῆς Θρᾴκης καὶ τοῦ Ἑξαμιλίου

Obverse

Two imperial busts: Constantine V (left), bearded, and Leo IV, beardless, each wearing chlamys and crown (only partially imprinted). Linear border.

Reverse

Imperial bust above an exergual line: Leo III (only partially visible) wearing loros. Below the line, an inscription of four lines. Linear border.

ΩΝΒ/ΚΟΜΜΕΡ
Κ/ΤΗΣΘΡΑΚΗ
ΣΤΟΥΕΞΑ
ΜΙ.ΙΟΥ

Τῶν βασιλικῶν κομμερκίων τῆς Θρᾴκης καὶ τοῦ Ἑξαμιλίου

Accession number BZS.1951.31.5.1743
Diameter 29.0 mm; field: 24.0 mm
Previous Editions

DO Seals 1, no. 54.2.
Zacos-Veglery, no. 270.

Credit Line Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Bequest of Thomas Whittemore.

Translation

Τῶν βασιλικῶν κομμερκίων τῆς Θρᾴκης καὶ τοῦ Ἑξαμιλίου.

(Seal) of the imperial kommerkia of Thrace and of Hexamilion.

Commentary

This seal is similar in its iconography to the folleis, Class 3, of Constantine V (see Grierson, Catalogue, III, 1, 11.1 ff, pl. IX).

Hexamilion (modern Bulayir) must have had significant economic activities, as is shown by our seals from there.

The see, a suffragan bishopric of Herakleia, was located at the site of ancient Lysimachia in the middle of the Dardanelles along the Thracian coast; it remained a bishopric until the fourteenth century when it was raised to the status of an archbishopric and metropolis (Laurent, Corpus V/1, 229; Asdracha, Thrace orientale, 249-50, 294-95). In a tenth-century notitia (cf. Darrouzès, Notitiae, 64), Hexamilion is equated with neighboring Chersonesos.

Bibliography

  • Byzantine Lead Seals, Vol. 1 (Open in Zotero)
  • Catalogue of the Byzantine Coins in the Dumbarton Oaks Collection and in the Whittemore Collection, Vol. 3, Leo III to Nicephorus III (717–1081) (Open in Zotero)
  • Le Corpus des sceaux de l’empire byzantin (Open in Zotero)
  • La Thrace Orientale et La Mer Noire: Géographie Ecclésiastique et Prosopographie (VIIIe-XIIe Siècles) (Open in Zotero)
  • Notitiae Episcopatuum Ecclesiae Constantinopolitanae (Open in Zotero)