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Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 22, 26 January 1935, Page 10 (Supplement)

HISTORY OF SEALS,

The ancients endeavoured to prohibit the use of images of their idols on signs or seals; but in process of time this was little regarded. It became customary'to have the figures of Egyptian and other deities —as well as of heroes, monsters, friends, ancestors, and even brutes —-011 their ring seals. The use of them is of high antiquity. Jezebel, in 1 Kings xxi, seals the orders she sent for Naboth's death with the king's seal. Pliny tells us that at Rome they were become of absolute necessity, inasmuch as a testament was null without the testator's seal and the seals of seven witnesses. It was the custom in the middle ages for the sovereign to add greater sanction when sealing his mandates by embedding three hairs from his beard in the wax; and there is still a charter of 1121 extant which contains in the execution clause words recording that the king had confirmed it by placing three hairs from his beard in the seal. The Etruscans sealed treaties with blood, and dough or paste has been used. Wax is, however, the most usual substance, and the several colours which we know are white,

yellow, red, green, black, blue, and mixed. .