Græco-Roman silver ring, set with an oval engraved sardonyx. Second Century A.D. British Museum] [Illustration: Greek gold ring with eye-shaped bezel. From Tarsus; Third Century A.D. British Museum] [Illustration: Hellenistic bronze ring. Bezel set with a convex pale green paste. Remains of gilding on ring British Museum] [Illustration: Greek silver ring. Engraved design beneath a sunk border; draped figure of a girl holding out a dove British Museum] [Illustration: Roman ring of opaque dark glass. Fourth Century A.D. British Museum] [Illustration: Mycenæan gold rings. 1, from Ialysos, Rhodes; given to the British Museum in 1870 by John Ruskin; 2, from excavation at Enkomi, 1896 British Museum] Many rings of the Bronze Age were found in the course of excavations conducted in 1901 by M. Henri de Morgan in the valley of Agha Evlar, stretching back from Kerghan on the Caspian Sea, in the region known as the “Persian Talyche.” Here several sepulchral dolmens were discovered which yielded a considerable number of ornamental objects of metal and stone, as well as beads of vitreous paste. There was no trace of inscriptions to aid in dating these “Scythian” finds, but they are considered to belong to the second millennium before Christ. The bronze rings are of several different types, some of them showing from three to five spirals; in other cases the ends are overlapping, or else brought together as closely as possible.[5] Although it would scarcely be safe to assume that finger-rings were never worn by the ancient Assyrians, still the almost total absence of representations of them, even on female figures, renders it safe to say that this must have been only very rarely the case. Possibly the persistence in Assyria and Babylonia of the cylindrical form of seal may account for this, in part at least, for the signet ring in many places was evolved from the cylinder-seal. Moreover, the absence of small intaglios in the period earlier than 500 B.C. would have deprived a ring of its almost essential setting. The plates in Layard’s great work on Assyrian remains, as well as those published by Flandrin and Coste, also offer strong negative evidence, although Dr. William Hayes Ward states that he would have expected finger-rings might have come from Egypt by the way of Syria. At a later period, under Greek influence, rings were not uncommon.[6] In the immense cemeteries at Warka and elsewhere numerous iron rings have been found, many of them toe-rings, as well as some made of shell, but the date of these burials is not easily determined, and they are probably, in most instances, not of much earlier date than the eighth or even the sixth century before Christ.