Exhibition 'Evolution of Power. Sphragistics and Numismatics in the Collection of the Novgorod Museum'

About exhibition

The exhibition, created with the support of the Russian Ministry of Culture, presents the main stages in the emergence and development of the seal as one of the attributes of state power in Ancient Rus and the history of early Rus' monetary circulation. The display features about 200 seals and around 1,000 coins: princely seals of an archaic type; seals of secular and ecclesiastical authorities of the 12th–early 13th centuries; the oldest surviving charters; seals of the republican government of Novgorod and of Novgorod princes; ecclesiastical sphragistics of the 13th–15th centuries; the Novgorod bullotarium (a collection of official bullae/seals); Arab dirhams and Russian imitations from the mid-10th century; srebreniks of Vladimir and Sviatopolk from the late 10th century; Western European denarii of the 10th–11th centuries; payment ingots of the 12th–mid-14th centuries; coins of Moscow, Tver, Nizhny Novgorod, Yaroslavl, Pskov and other Russian principalities of the 14th–15th centuries; and 18th-century coins (polushka, altyn, grivna, grivennik, poltina, polupoltinnik, ruble).