Publisher's Synopsis
This study deals with clay sealings from Hellenistic archives. The sealings were usually only preserved when an archive burned down. The fire destroyed the documents and preserved the sealings. About 80,000 seal impressions have survived from Hellenistic times through this way of coincidental conservation. To make use of the potential of these finds as valuable historical sources, it is indispensable to approach the material with quantitative methods.