Olga Karagiorgou

Olga Karagiorgou conceived and has the scientific responsibility of carrying out with the help of a team of young researchers the "TAKTIKON", a research project whose initial phase was funded (to the amount of 200,000 euros) by the ARISTEIA II Excellence Award Program. The aim of the project is to study the institutional and social history of Byzantium, using as its main research tool a series of reliable and well-dated prosopographic lists of all the state officials once active in the “themes”, the large-scale political/military divisions typical of the Empire’s administrative structure from the 7th through to the 13th centuries.

The name "TAKTIKON"– styled in all caps, so as to allow the word to be read seamlessly in both the Greek and Latin alphabets – was taken from the Byzantine “taktika”: ranking manuals that helped the “artriklines” (a court official responsible for organizing imperial feasts and banquets) place the attending officials in the correct seat in order of precedence, as dictated by their titles and office. The TAKTIKON aims to provide a similar service to modern-day Byzantine scholars by presenting an online manual (https://taktikon.academyofathens.gr), in which all Byzantine state officials are listed in strict chronological order within the administrative sector and the “theme” in which they served.

The "TAKTIKON" emerged from a research project concerned originally with three large “themes” in Asia Minor (Opsikion, the Anatolikoi and the Kibyrraiotai) that was undertaken at the Academy of Athens’ Research Center for Byzantine and Post-Byzantine Art (February 2014 – October 2015). Once this project came to an end, research continued into other areas and “themes” of the Byzantine Empire, conducted by Olga Karagiorgou and the two main researchers of the TAKTIKON: Dr Pantelis Charalampakis and Dr Christos Malatras.

Research for the "TAKTIKON" is not limited to the comprehensive documentation of several primary and secondary sources (including printed and online auction catalogues), containing sigillographic and non-sigillographic evidence relevant to the project. It extends also to on-site research at various sigillographic collections (more than 75 public and private collections in 15 countries have been taken into account in the project, some of them still unpublished), including the four largest ones worldwide: Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C. (c. 17,000 lead seals), the Hermitage in St. Petersburg (c. 13,000), the Bibliothèque nationale de France and the Institut français d’études byzantines in Paris (c. 9,000), and the Numismatic Museum in Athens (c. 4,000).

The results of the "TAKTIKON" research project were first published in the article “State Officials in the ‘Themes’ of Opsikion, the Anatolikoi, and the Kibyrraiotai: New and Recently Revisited Sigillographic Evidence” [“Byzantina Symmeikta” 26 (2016), pp. 247–308]. Findings of the ongoing research have also been presented at various international conferences. The Proceedings of an international One-day Conference held at the Academy of Athens Building (June 19, 2015), with the participation of 17 speakers from seven countries (Bulgaria, France, Greece, Russia, Turkey, Ukraine, and the US), as well as the results of the TAKTIKON research project accomplished up to the end of 2020 (a book totaling 850 pages) is set to be published by the Academy of Athens in October 2021 with the generous support of the "JANET ZAKOS Foundation for the Study of BYZANTIUM" (Geneva) and the CAPUANO S.A.