The noun σφραγις (sphragis) describes a seal, a wax blob impressed with a distinctive symbol that would secure a message and confirm its authenticity, or the instrument with which to make such an imprint, which was commonly a signet-ring that an authoritative person would wear on his person. Especially when administration and communication began to dominate all forms of government and trade, the king's seal quite literally held the realm together. Someone who bore the imprint of the seal was obviously assigned an office of great importance, but someone who carried the instrument with which to place such seals upon approved goods and people, had the king's power to assess and select, to accept and reject, to assign and destroy. In the classics, on rare occasions, our word could also describe something sealed, or something appropriated by means of a sealed document (commonly, a plot of land).

It's officially a mystery where our noun comes from, but, as we explain in our elaborate article on Hellas, here at Abarim Publications we surmise that much of the essential ideas surrounding information technology — the alphabet itself but also writing materials such as βιβλος (biblos), i.e. paper, spelling standards, even the names Homer, Helen and Hellene — were imported into the Greek world from the Semitic language basin along with the Phoenician abjad (consonantal alphabet). Our noun σφραγις (sphragis) certainly reminds of the important root ספר (s-p-r), which is central to the Hebrew reflections on information technology and which itself may have stemmed from an Assyrian loanword saparu, meaning to send (a message): the Hebrew noun ספר (seper) means record; verb ספר (sapar) means to write; noun ספרה (sipra) means book; noun ספר (sopor) means scribe.

The second part of our noun σφραγις (sphragis) may then relate to the mysterious and powerful αιγις (aigis), which Zeus and Athena carried around with them. It's also officially a mystery what this thing called αιγις (aigis) might have been, but here at Abarim Publications we surmise that it (as well as many more elements of Greek mythology) has to do with the natural contraction of society: the emergence of humanity from the wilderness, the formation of cities and stratified societies, governments and formal law, and ultimately writing and the metaphorical narratives that exposed the deepest dreams and subconscious concerns of mankind.

The first words formed like mist in the natural interactions of vast populations of very early humans (Genesis 2:6). When these first words had achieved a critical mass, language was "discovered": the defining conscious mind of homo sapiens emerged (2:7), words began to be systematically manufactured (2:19-20), rain poured down and the earth was inundated (6:17), and mankind began to create its own human world, peopled by domesticated species and safely separated from the wilderness (8:17). Rain formed rivers and rivers sustained entire civilizations (see our article on the name Tigris).

The Greeks understood all this: the signature epithet of Zeus was νεφεληγερετα (nephelegereta), or Cloud-Gatherer; see our article on the noun νεφελη (nephele), cloud. Athena's epithets were παλλας (pallas), youth; παρθενος (parthenos), virgin (Isaiah 7:14, Matthew 1:23), or stemmed from the noun πολις (polis), meaning city.

This noun is used 16 times in the New Testament, see full concordance, and from it derive:

The noun σφυρον (sphuron) denotes the ankle, or perhaps more specifically, the bones of the ankle (Acts 3:7 only). It's fairly common in the classics (in discussions about athletic runners and such) and was also used to describe the "ankles" or "foothills" of mountains. It appears to relate to the noun σφυρα (sphura), which evidently initially described a relatively small hammer, for use in the working of precious metals like bronze and gold (Od.3.434). Adjective σφυρηλατος (sphurelatos) means "hammer-wrought" (of idols, as opposed to being cast). The diminutive σφυριον (sphurion) described an even smaller hammer.

The more violent smith's hammer, such as the one wielded by Hephaestus, the divine smith (Il.18.477), was called ραιστηρ (raister), literally a smasher, from the verb ραιω (raio), to break or shatter. Familiar Latin terms for hammers are: marcus, a huge one (hence the name Mark), martellus, a mid-sized one, and marculus, a small one. Hebrew for large hammer is מקבת (maqqebet), which is often cited as the source of the name Maccabee, and appears to literally means either hole- or hollow-maker (from נקב, naqab, to pierce or make hollow; hence also נקבה, nekeva, female) or curser (from identical verb נקב, naqab, to curse).

Why author Luke would use this rather specific noun σφυρον (sphuron), ankle bone, in this particular context is not immediately clear. The point of the story seems to be that Peter healed the born-lame man in the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene (which may mean Diaspora) by simply speaking to him and grabbing him by the right hand. Luke was a doctor who surely knew all the names of all the bones in a person's body, but he could not have expected the same of his audience. Or could he? As evidenced by the so-called "Jehohanan heel-bone", the Romans would crucify someone by driving nails through their hands and heelbones. The σφυρον (sphuron) was not exactly the heelbone, but like the heel, a prominent feature of the foot. Note that the Hebrew word for lame, namely פסח (piseah), is spelled identical to פסח (pesah), meaning Pesah or Passover.

The link between our nouns σφυρον (sphuron), ankle, and σφυρα (sphura), hammer, is often explained from the observation that an ankle looks a bit like a hammer. And it does. But a σφυρα (sphura) was used for careful precision work: for folding, rounding or flattening surfaces of precious metals. And that seems to suggest that the agile tool was named after the agile body part rather than the other way around.

Where either noun comes from isn't known or wholehearted acknowledged by linguists, and they may not even be etymologically related (but evolved in a convergent way from different seeds by the ever thoughtful pre-Greek speakers). Our words may not be Indo-European at all, and derived from some otherwise unknown source (the folding of metal sheets and the rolling of scrolls do seem to resemble: see our consideration of the root ספר, s-p-r, above).

Otherwise, the closest PIE to our words is the widely attested root "sperH-", to kick, hence words like spurn (to reject with scorn and violence) and words like the Dutch verb speuren, to track (to trace someone's steps) and the German noun Spur, trail, and the English words "spear" and "spire" and "spur" (those things that cowboys use to make their horse go). Not from "sperH-", to kick, but rather from "sper-" (1) to sow (to scatter seed) come words like "spore" and the Greek verb σπειρω (speiro), to sow (hence "sperm" and Diaspora). From yet another PIE root, namely "sper-" (2), meaning to turn or twist, comes the noun σπειρα (speira), which denotes anything twisted, coiled or wrapped around something; hence our English word spiral.

The much more common Greek word for to kick is the verb λακτιζω (laktizo), that is thought to mean "to do the heel thing", from the adverb λαξ (lax), "with the heel". This meaning was derived from the context in which these words appear (which often come with parallels or retellings that use words like πους, pous, foot), because otherwise, there is no word for heel or even foot in Greek that is anywhere near similar to the adverb λαξ (lax), "with the heel" (which is why, we here at Abarim Publications suspect it comes from the Hebrew verb הלך, halak, to go or walk).