Digiseal · Byzantine seals in a digital age: new tools for European research

Byzantine seals in a digital age: new tools for European research

Museums, libraries and private collections throughout the world hold many Byzantine seals: these are sealings in lead from the eastern Roman empire (4th-15th century). The seals contain descriptions of the persons responsible, as well as their chosen iconography. While scholarly understanding (sigillography) has been improving, the resultant publications are expensive and not easily accessible. Recently an international network of scholars discussed online publication of seals (as SigiDoc), using the subset of TEI-XML markup known as EpiDoc, developed initially for inscriptions, coins and papyri, with particular input from King's College London (KCL), but now being widely deployed. This Fellowship allowed the Fellow, already an expert in sigillography, to work at KCL, developing a protocol (SigiDoc) for adapting EpiDoc for the publication of seals. The objectives were: 1) Academic: Publication online of collections of seals, from the British Library, London (about 330 seals) and a couple of private collections (about 350). 2) Digital: The creation of a new tool for the digital edition of seals, based on the XML language. 3) Curatorial, exemplified at the BL and the participation of th eFellow to its catalogue. The outcomes are: a) a digital corpus of Byzantine seals, in a full scholarly edition, intended to serve as a pilot; b) a set of tools, protocols and guidelines for others to use, and to facilitate interoperability between projects. At the very beginning of the fellowship, in September 2015,the relevant Curator at the BL resigned, and a new Curator – Dr Peter Toth – was only appointed in February 2016. This delayed the beginning of the work on the BL collection and led to a new negotiation with the Library about the terms of the collaboration, which ended with a mutually satisfying agreement only a few weeks before the fellowship ended. This will necessarily delay the appearance of the planned publication. The fellowship was terminated almost 9 months earlier than expected, because the Fellow was elected to a permanent position as ‘senior lecturer/assistant professor’ in Byzantine history at the University of Paris-Sorbonne. But his three main objectives have been achieved: the digital tool for the edition of the seals is ready, two of the three collections of seals have been prepared for edition, and an official collaboration with the British Library has been formalised through an agreement. The project has contributed to the establishment of a new professional skill, digital sigillography.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union