By Omar Afifi '24

This seal would accompany official documents, like a signature. Seals have been used for many years to authenticate and legitimize the documents they accompanied. Like coins during the same time period, a seal had to be consistently made because inconsistencies signaled inauthenticity. In fact, seals were usually similar between earlier and later rulers of a kingdom, with slight variations over time and a change, of course, in the name of the current ruler—see “what is this?” to learn more.  Seals of the kingdom of Jerusalem allowed the new government to set the standard between legitimate and illegitimate documents. 

The seal wasn’t on the document directly, however. Instead, the seal was added to the document using a string. If we take a closer look at this seal’s top and bottom, we see indentations – more obvious at the bottom. These indentations are the locations where the string would go through the seal to attach it to the document. The string would then wrap around the document. In order to access the sealed document, the string would have to be unwrapped, but the seal continued to remain attached to the document at one end.