The ring given by Pharaoh to Joseph was, undoubtedly, a signet or seal-ring, and gave authority to the documents to which it was affixed; and by the delivery of it, therefore, Pharaoh delegated to Joseph the chief authority in the state.[109] The king of Persia, in the same way, gave his seal-ring to his successive ministers, Haman and Mordecai; and in the book of Esther,[110] the use of such a ring is expressly declared: “The writing which is written in the king’s name, and sealed with the king’s seal, may no man reverse.” That ministers or lords under the king had their rings of office, is also apparent from what occurred with the closing of the den of lions: “And a stone was brought and laid upon the mouth of the den; and the king sealed it with his own signet, and with the signet of his lords; that the purpose might not be changed concerning Daniel.”[111] In Egypt, under the Ptolemies, the king’s ring was the badge under which the country was governed. It seemed to answer to the great seal of England.[112] We read that Sosibius, minister under Ptolemy Philopater, was forced, by popular clamor, to give up the king’s signet ring to another. Here was a going out of a Lord John Russell, and a coming in of a Lord Palmerston. At first, Roman Senators were not allowed to wear gold rings, unless they had been ambassadors; but, at length, the Senators and Knights were allowed the use of them; although Acron in Horace observes they could not do it unless it were given them by the Prætor.[113] The people wore silver rings. Inhabitants of the eastern world do not sign their names. They have ring-seals, in which name and title are engraven, and they make an impression with thick ink where we make our signature. To give a person, then, your seal-ring, is to give him the use of an authority and power which your own signature possesses. This explains the extraordinary anxiety about seals, as exhibited in the laws and usages of the East, and to which we have referred in a former chapter. It also illustrates Judah’s anxiety about the signet which he had pledged to Tamar. In ancient times, the forefinger was emblematical of power. Among the Hebrews, “the finger of God” denoted his power; and it was the forefinger among the gods of Greece and Italy which wore the ring, the emblem of supremacy.[114] § 2. Rings are used in coronations. The English public records, as now extant in the Tower of London, contain no mention of any coronation proceedings before the reign of Edward the Second. The accounts of the forms observed with reference to that king being crowned, as also of Richard the Second, are the two most ancient from which the minutes of those matters can be collected on official authority.[115] However, there is enough of Saxon times left to show that the Anglo-Saxon kings used a ring in their coronation ceremonies.[116]