Glossary Collecting and the antiquities trade
Lead export tag
Also called: lead seal, export bulla, lead export bullae
A small lead seal wired to an antiquity by the Cypriot authorities to mark it as approved for lawful export.
Objects sold by licensed dealers or from the Cyprus Museum's sale room left the island with a typed permit and a lead tag, or bulla, attached by wire, often through a handle. The tags survive on pieces still in circulation: a Cypro-Archaic barrel flask offered at auction in 2026 still had two lead export bullae on its handle.
A tag is strong evidence of lawful export in the decades before 1996, but it can come loose or be moved to another object, so on request the Department of Antiquities checks licence numbers against its own archive. A Bichrome bowl from the collection of the botanist Oleg Polunin, bought from Petros Kolokasides in the 1950s or 1960s, was confirmed this way (Collecting Cypriot Antiquities Today).
Related terms
- Export licence
An official permit allowing an antiquity to leave its country of origin; in Cyprus, issued by the Department of Antiquities from 1935.
- Licensed dealer
A trader authorised by the Cyprus Department of Antiquities to buy and sell antiquities, a lawful role from 1935 until dealing was banned in 1996.
- Department of Antiquities (Cyprus)
The government body responsible for the archaeology, museums and ancient monuments of Cyprus, created by the Antiquities Law of 1935.
Where it appears
- Collecting Cypriot Antiquities Today: Law, Provenance and Due Diligence
- The 1974 Presumption: Why Cypriot Antiquities Are Treated as Guilty Until Proven Innocent
- Lawful and Illicit in the Record: What Each History Leaves on Paper
- Licensed Export from the Republic of Cyprus, 1974 to 1996
- Licensed Dealers and Registered Collections: The 1935 System and Its Record, to 1974
- Petros Kolokasides: A Licensed Dealer in Nicosia
- The Cyprus Museum Saleroom: The State's Own Sales of 'Duplicate' Antiquities, 1920s to 1991
- The Legal Export of Cypriot Antiquities
- Documenting a Lawful History: How to Show a Cypriot Antiquity Left the Island Lawfully
- EU and UK Rules for Cypriot Antiquities: Export, Import and Return in Europe Today
- Heirs and Old Collections: Where the Cypriot Antiquities on Today's Market Come From
- Late Antique and Early Byzantine Cyprus
and 8 more compendium pages