Dear board
Un update and some thoughts on this elusive seal.
As Gert pointed out, there exist no
seals that combine the titles of doux and
strategos of Anatolikoi.
A I found out, this is because of the simple fact that at some time the title of doux replaced the office of
strategos of Anatolikoi.
On the other hand, I wasn't able to find a seal mentioning a
strategos of both the themata of Anatolikoi and Boukellarion. (which doesn't mean they can't exist of course).
Now looking again at the seal, I observe that in the space before the "O" at the bottom line there are not traces of a "B" leading to the word "Boukellarion" as proposed by Gert.
At this point I would be tempted to argue that the last word could after all be "Doukas", refering to the last name of the owner (there could be a diagonal line of a "Δ" before the "O") if we dismiss the "S" as a flaw, but then again the abbreviating comma after the "K" doesn't make sense. The engraver
had enough space to write the whole name.
Another mystery...
Regards
Iolkia
