La "monnaie" présumée et perdue de l’impératrice Théophano (959–969)

This article deals with the alleged and lost ʻcoinʼ of the Empress Theophano (959-969), attested by one eighteenth-century engraving and other two of the nineteenth-century. Since several lead seals with similar portrait and inscriptions survive, many scholars have evaluated the graphic documents deriving from a real copper coin or from a seal of the existing type. A careful iconographic and stylistic analysis would suggest the restitution of two distinct objects; this idea was never presented before because of the little consideration of the eighteenth-century engraving. The comparison with other middle Byzantine numismatic and sphragistic examples suggests for the first engraving the reproduction of an unknown and misunderstood lead seal and, for the second and third one, the image of a forgery realised in the wake of the more ancient illustration.