Seal of Konstantinos, the Son of the Protoproedros and Exousiokrator of All Alania (ca 1065–1075)

This paper offers a corrected reading of a lead seal excavated at Anakopia which belonged to Konstantinos, the son of the protoproedros and exousiokrator of all Alania. Although the palaeography of the seal dates it to the second half of the eleventh century, the historical context and the title of protoproedros makes the chronology narrow, as 1065–1075. This find can be linked to the Byzantine-Georgian conflict over Anakopia and probably to the negotiations on returning the town to the Georgian king which happened shortly after 1074. The narrow chronology of the seal speaks in favour of the identification of the Alanian exousiokrator as Dorgholel (mentioned in 1068), thus excluding the possibility that Konstantinos of the seal and Konstantinos Alanos (mentioned in 1045–1047) were the same person. The former Konstantinos, a possible heir to Dorgholel, might be a brother of Irene, the wife of protoproedros Isaak Komnenos, so the same high title given to his father in 1065–1075 points to a Byzantine-Alan alliance which made possible the marriage of Irene and Isaak Komnenos in 1072 and the participation of 6,000 Alanian horsemen in suppressing Roussel de Bailleul’s revolt in 1073–1074. The unique title of “exousiokrator of all Alania” attested on the seal and in the list of the metropolitans of Bulgaria possibly reflected the struggle of the Alanian ruler against centrifugal tendencies in his domain during the twelfth century; its later disappearance suggests that this title was a Dorgholel’s situational invention.