Ancient Rus’ seal as text
The main purpose of seal is to verify the authenticity of the text to which it is attached. If bulla verified a document, it should allow one to understand whether the seal’s owner had the authority to confirm this document. In case of correspondence, seal confirmed the message’s origin and, therefore, allowed one to discover whether the message came from the person mentioned in the text. Therefore, graphic symbols and their combinations on seals might be analysed as a kind of language, i. e. a system of signs easily readable by contemporaries. Like historical sources of any other kind, seals should be studied as particular source including at least their classification and systematization. Classification intends to uncover design elements of the seal, to place these elements as a hierarchy, and to determine their semantic in the «seal language». Systematization is aimed at the determination of the combination of known elements and at the procedure of the «reading the seal». Detailed classification in the only way to decipher the information contained in the sigillographic type.