Nomos 20

BYZANTINE. 4th-6th century. Wine amphora stamp (Bronze, 98 x 54 x 5 mm, 224.00 g), rectangular with a raised rim and a high, c. 30 mm, ring handle on the plain back, in the name of Iakob the Scribe/Notary. ΕΙΑ - ΚΟY / ΛΙΛ - ΕΒΑ (retrograde) Seven-branched Menorah between a shofar, on the right, and, on the left, a lulav (palm branch) and an etrog (yellow citron). For a bronze stamp with a Menorah from Sardis now in the British Museum, with the name of Leontios and with the Menorah between a bunch of grapes and a palm branch, inventory 1888, 0511. 3, see: Dalton 1901, 487 and Friedenberg 4; for a stamp with the name Sophronios and a Menorah, now in the Israel Museum, see Friedenberg 6; for similar stamps with Menorahs, more elaborately shown but lacking names, see: Friedenberg 1 = Christie's New York, 13 December 2013, 167 ($47,500, from the Steinhardt Collection), and both Friedenberg 2, in the Jewish Museum in New York, and the very similar Roma e 59, 11 July 2019, 595 (£8,000). With a dusty olive-green patina, very sharp and clear. Some minor encrustations, otherwise, as made.

From a European collection, formed in the 1990s, and said to have been found in the area of Manisa, ancient Magnesia ad Sipylum: to the north and between Smyrna and Sardes.

It has long been assumed that bronze stamps like this one were bread stamps, but Friedenberg (D. M. Friedenberg, "The Evolution and Uses of Jewish Byzantine Stamp Seals", Journal of the Walters Art Gallery 52/53, 1994/5, pp. 1-21) points out, giving full references, that while some rectangular bronze stamps, as the one in lot 443, below, were used as bread stamps, others, like the one here, were, in fact, actually used to seal wine amphorae and other large containers.
For the meaning of the inscription on this stamp, we are greatly indebted to the kindness of Dr. Ira Rezak, MD and his colleagues. The name of the owner as given on this stamp is Ειακοῦ (or Ειακῶ / Ειακῶς), which is simply a nick name or short form for Iakob. The second word, Λιλεβα, must be derived from the Latin Libellarius (scribe or notary), which went into Hebrew as Liblar. Thus, "Iakob the Notary". For yet another stamp, quite similar to this one, but definitely from Trebizond and now in the Cabinet des Médailles in Paris, see the dissertation by A. M. Feldman (University of Birmingham 2018), Ethnicity and Statehood in Pontic-Caspian Eurasia (8-13th c.), fig 103 (in the name of Efthymios), and with full references.