Rings for the finger : $b from the earliest known times to the present, with full descriptions of the origin, early making, materials, the archæology, history, for affection, for love, for engagement, for wedding, commemorative, mourning, etc. — John Shaqi
Rings for the finger : $b from the earliest known times to the present, with full descriptions of the origin, early making, materials, the archæology, history, for affection, for love, for engagement, for wedding, commemorative, mourning, etc.Kunz, George Frederick
History
Rings for the finger : $b from the earliest known times to the present, with full descriptions of the origin, early making, materials, the archæology, history, for affection, for love, for engagement, for wedding, commemorative, mourning, etc.
Kunz, George Frederick
Rings; Rings -- Folklore
Several gold rings of Egyptian workmanship, excavated in tombs at
Enkomi, Cyprus, date back to the time of the Middle Empire in Egypt.
One in pale gold, now in the British Museum, has a flat oval bezel,
inscribed “Maāt, the golden one of the two lands.” This belongs to the
period from the XIX to the XXI Dynasty (or approximately from 1350 to
1000 B.C.). A ring found on the surface of the ground is of
electrum and very massive, and is engraved with a draped figure seated
on a throne, to whom approaches another figure clothed with a lion’s
skin and wearing on the head a disk and horns; a lion walking is in the
exergue, and the sun’s disk is above the two figures. This is believed
to belong to the late XVIII Dynasty, toward 1400 B.C. A thin,
rounded hoop of pale gold, the ends of which are twisted round each
other, and a rounded hoop of yellow gold engraved with four uræi, are
two other examples in the British Museum of the rings from Enkomi. A
massive silver ring from the same place has a large oval bezel with
the following names and titles inscribed in Egyptian hieroglyphics:
Rā-Heru-Khuti, Rā]-Kheperu Nefer, Meri-Rā, Ptah-neb-nut-maāt.[9] The
Cypriot gold ornaments which these rings help to date are considered
to be essentially contemporary with those from the tombs in the lower
town of Mycenæ, the period being approximately 1300–1100 B.C.,
possibly some years earlier or later.
A beautifully worked, perforated gold ring, set with a scarab of
carnelian, was found in Cyprus and is now in the Konstantinidis
Collection at Nicosia. The workmanship as well as the style of
the setting indicates that it was produced in the sixth century
B.C. Engraved on the carnelian is a fabulous monster, somewhat
resembling a chimæra, half lion, half boar.[10] Another ring of the
same period from Marion-Arsinoë, Cyprus, has a silver hoop, and is set
with a flat scaraboid, engraved with a female figure kneeling.
One of the largest Mycenæan rings shows a goddess seated near a tree,
and worshippers approaching to do her homage. Others offer various
devices: an altar with worshippers; a griffin and a seated divinity;
a pair of sphinxes; griffins, bulls’ heads, etc., in heraldic
ordering.[11] Here we have early Greek art transforming and adapting
Oriental forms of metal engraving, to be succeeded, more than five
centuries later, by the great gem-engravings of the palmy days of the
art of Ionia and Greece.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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