Graffito № 25 from St. Sophia cathedral in Kiev: what do we know about the purchase of "Boyan`s land"?

Graffito No 25 from St. Sophia Cathedral in Kiev reports the purchase of "Boyan s land" by “Vsevolod s Princess” on January 30 of an unknown year in the presence of twelve witnesses. The Princess paid seventy "grivny sobolii" or seven hundred "grivny dranits" for it, as written in the text of the inscription. Sergey A. Vysotsky discovered this graffito in 1964, and it quickly attracted researchers' attention, being an extremely rare example of early Rus record of land purchase. Despite the extensive historiography, a number of issues related to this text remain unresolved at the moment. In particular, there is no consensus on the dating of the inscription. Vysotsky, based of his paleographic analysis and phonetic features of the text, dated graffito back to the second half of the 12th century. He identified the princess from the graffito with the widow of Vsevolod Olgovich, who died in 1179. Boris A. Rybakov linked the purchase of "Boyan s land" with the second wife of Vsevolod Yaroslavich, whose death is mentioned in chronicles s.a. 1111. The results of a new extra-stratigraphic evaluation of the inscription organized in this research appeared to be different from the conclusions of Andrey A. Zaliznyak. He tested the method of paleographic dating developed for Novgorodian birchbark documents on this graffito and dated the inscription back to c. 1120-c. 1200 (with a preference of c. 1160-c. 1180). The author's analysis shows that there are no arguments against the identification of the "Vsevolod s Princess" and the widow of Vsevolod Yaroslavich. Therefore, the inscription should be dated back to the period from 1093 to 1111. In addition, the article deals with a number of problems related to the study of the list of witnesses of the purchase, the localization of the "Boyan s land", its seller or former owner, the amount of the transaction, and the very fact of writing such a record on a cathedral wall.