Moscow- Russian archaeologists found in the city of Veliki Nóvgorod A lead seal attributed to Prince Yaroslav and El Sabio (978-1054)three decades after the first seal of this ruler of the former kyiv Rus was found.
“During the archaeological works carried out within the framework of the preparations for the installation of a heating network in the Yaroslav court (…) another label of Yaroslav el Sabio was found,” said the Institute of Archeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences in its official portal.
It is a new type seal, different from that found in 1994 in the same city: if in both in one of the faces the effigy of St. Jorge was represented with a spear and a shield, the obverse are different, since the first one showed an image of the prince, and the second, a trident.
“Due to its design, the new seal shows an undoubted compositional similar with the currencies printed by Yaroslav el Sabio in Nóvgorod at the beginning of the eleventh century,” says the statement, which points out that these currencies are “extremely rare and only 8 specimens are known, which distinguish their exclusive beauty and refinement.”
The specialists affirm that the newly found seal “can be attributed with all certainty to the activities of Yaroslav el Sabio, who would use them to certify their documents during their Principality in Nóvgorod (1010-1019).
According to scientists, it is a predictable finding, since even at the end of the nineteenth century, Iván Tolstoy, recognized Russian numismatic, advanced the possibility that Yaroslav the wise, faithful follower of the Byzantine culture, would use this type of stamps.
“Iván Tolstói’s prognosis was almost completely confirmed. Not only predicted that at the obverse Yaroslav label would register a trident, its heraldic symbol, but would have the inscription in a circle, as in the silver coins,” the institute said.