Respecting the antiquity of wafers, M. Spiess has made an observation[379] which may lead to further researches, that the oldest seal with a red wafer he has ever yet found, is on a letter written by D. Krapf at Spires in the year 1624, to the government at Bayreuth. M. Spiess has found also that some years after, Forstenhäusser, the Brandenburg factor at Nuremberg, sent such wafers to a bailiff at Osternohe. It appears however that wafers were not used during the whole of the seventeenth century in the chancery of Brandenburg, but only by private persons, and by these even seldom; because, as Spiess says, people were fonder of Spanish wax. The first wafers with which the chancery of Bayreuth began to make seals were, according to an expense account of the year 1705, sent from Nuremberg. The use of wax however was still continued; and among the Plassenburg archives there is a rescript of 1722, sealed with proper wax. The use of wax must have been continued longer in the duchy of Weimar; for in the Electa Juris Publici there is an order of the year 1716, by which the introduction of wafers in law matters is forbidden, and the use of wax commanded. This order however was abolished by duke Ernest Augustus in 1742, and wafers again introduced. FOOTNOTES [344] Gattereri Elem. Artis Diplom. 1765, 4to, p. 285. [345] It is singular that Pliny denies that the Egyptians used seals, lib. xxiii. c. 1. Herodotus however, and others, prove the contrary; and Moses speaks of the seal-rings of the Egyptians. See Goguet. [346] Herodot. lib. ii. c. 38. [347] Lucian. in Pseudomant. [348] Act. iv. ap. Bin. tom. iii. Concil. part. i. p. 356. Whether the γῆ σημαντρὶς, however, of Herodotus and the πηλὸς of Lucian and of the Byzantine be the same kind of earth, can be determined with as little certainty as whether the _creta_, called by some Roman authors a sealing-earth, be different from both. [349] Orat. in Verrem, iv. c. 9. In the passage referred to, some instead of _cretula_ read _cerula_. I shall here take occasion to remark also, that in the Acts of the Council of Nice before-mentioned, instead of πηλὸν some read κηρόν: but I do not see a sufficient reason for this alteration, as in the before-quoted passage of Lucian it is expressly said, that people sealed κηρῷ ἣ πηλῷ. Reiske himself, who proposes that amendment, says that πηλὸν may be retained. Stephanus, however, does not give that meaning to this word in his Lexicon. Pollux and Hesychius tell us, that the Athenians called sealing-earth also ῥύπον. [350] Orat. pro Flacco, c. 16. [351] Serv. ad lib. vi. Æneid. p. 1037. [352] Lib. xii. c. 43. [353] Georg. i. v. 179.