Since the question of origins is buried in surmise, it seems fair to follow that eminent advocate of the middle way, Sir Roger de Coverley, and allow that there is something to be said for all three theories. Each impulse, to hold up clothing, to ward off evil, to enjoy beauty—power, protection, pleasure—may have had a share in the birth of adornment. It is true that there are paintings and statues, in the early tombs, of women clad only in their jewels. But while queens, and the concubines of kings might be thus untrammeled in their quest of beauty, humbler folk at work needed workaday attire. And always the magicians, the medicine men, then the priests, wove their holy spells, with mitre and chalice and ring inscribed with the secret words of power. A monarch of early times was an impressive sight, as not only his rings, his armlets and neckpiece, but his breastplate, the buckle of his belt, and the hilt of his sword were carved with sacred symbols and crusted with precious stones. Here were protection, power, and grandeur intertwined. Perhaps the earliest jewelry to which we can attach an owner’s name was in the find unearthed in 1901 by Flinders Petrie in the royal tombs at Abydos. It is a bracelet of golden hawks, rising from alternate blocks of turquoise and gold, and it belonged to the Egyptian Queen of Zer back in 5400 B.C. Somewhat later lived the Princess Knumit, whose mummy was adorned with all manner of jewels, anklets, bracelets, armlets, headbands, including a serpent necklace of beads of gold, silver, carnelian, lapis lazuli, and emerald, and hieroglyphics wrought in gold with inlaid gems. From Chaldea, as early as 3000 B.C., we have beads, and jewelry of lapis lazuli, and headdresses of finely beaten gold. _Egypt and the Near East_ A panel in one of the pyramids gives us a realistic picture of the interior of a jeweler’s shop of long ago. The master craftsman, his bookkeeper, his workers and his apprentices are all busy at their tasks. We see them selecting, cutting, grinding, firing, shaping, setting, polishing, with tools that have changed little in 3000 years. The jewels we know today are all present there: diadems, earrings, brooches, bracelets, rings, girdles, anklets. The necklace seems to have been, in most cases, a wide tight band, almost a collar; on many a mummy such a “choker” has been preserved, studded with jewels, the gold between often in the shape of a falcon, or a lotus, or a sphinx. Favorite among the designs, of course, was the scarab; in the mummy itself, a scarab was inserted to take the place of the heart.