The porcelain finger-rings of ancient Egypt are extremely beautiful, the
band of the ring being seldom above one eighth of an inch in thickness.
Some have a plate in which in bas-relief is the god Baal, full-faced,
playing on the tambourine, as the inventor of music; others have their
plates in the shape of the right symbolical eye, the emblem of the sun, of
a fish of the perch species, or of a scarabæus. Some few represent
flowers. Those which have elliptical plates with hieroglyphical
inscriptions bear the names of Amen-Ra, and of other gods and monarchs, as
Amenophis III., Amenophis IV., and Amenmest of the eighteenth and
nineteenth dynasties. One of these rings has a little bugle on each side,
as if it had been strung on the beaded work of a mummy, instead of being
placed on the finger. Blue is the prevalent colour, but a few white and
yellow rings, and some even ornamented with red and purple colours, have
been discovered. It is scarcely credible that these rings, of a substance
finer and more fragile than glass, were worn during life, and it seems
hardly likely that they were worn by the poorer classes, for the use of
the king’s name on sepulchral objects seems to have been restricted to
functionaries of state. Some larger rings of porcelain of about an inch in
diameter, seven-eighths of an inch broad, and one-sixteenth of an inch
thick, made in open work, represents the constantly-repeated
lotus-flowers, and the god Ra, or the sun, seated and floating through the
heavens in his boat.
At the Winchester meeting of the Archæological Institute in 1845 a curious
swivel-ring of blue porcelain was exhibited, found at Abydus in Upper
Egypt; setting modern. It has a double impression: on the one side is the
king making an offering to the gods, with the emblems of life and purity;
on the other side the name of the monarch in the usual ‘cartouche,’ one
that is well known, being that of Thothmes III., whom Wilkinson supposes
to have been the Pharaoh of Exodus. It is worthy of remark that this
cartouche is ‘supported’ by asps, which are usually considered to be the
attributes of royalty.
[Illustration: Egyptian Porcelain Ring.]
The annexed engraving represents an Egyptian ring, _en pâte céramique_,
from M. Dieulafait’s ‘Diamants et Pierres Précieuses.’
The signet of Sennacherib in the British Museum is made of Amazon stone,
one of the hardest stones known to the lapidary, and bears an intaglio
‘which,’ observes the Rev. C. W. King, ‘by its extreme minuteness, and
the precision of the drawing, displays the excellence to which the art had
already attained.’
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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