Seal of Amalric, king of Jerusalem (DO BZS.1951.31.5.2939)
King Amalric’s lead seal, attached by a string, traveled with official documents. A seal has two sides, known as the obverse and the reverse.
King Amalric’s lead seal witnesses the existence of the newly formed Christian kingdom of Jerusalem after the First Crusade. Amalric took the throne some sixty years after the foundation of the kingdom. Under Amalric, military losses against Egypt strengthened the position of one of the region’s most powerful generals, Saladin.
On the obverse side, Amalric, king of Jerusalem (1163–1174), is seated on a backless throne surrounded by a Latin inscription translating to “Seal of Amalric.” The reverse side contains three famous religious buildings of Jerusalem: the Holy Sepulchre, marking the site of Christ’s crucifixion and tomb; the Tower of David, an ancient structure believed to be part of the palace of David, a king of Israel in the Hebrew Bible; and the Dome of the Rock, an Islamic shrine that the crusaders repurposed as a Latin church and called the Templum Domini (“Temple of the Lord”). Surrounding the structures is an inscription in Latin that translates to “King of Jerusalem.”
