Fig. 102. | Fig. 103. |
Rings formed of bone, amber, and glass, were provided for the poorer classes, as was the case in ancient Egypt. They were also used as mortuary rings, and are found on the hands of the dead in Italian sepulchres. The Waterton collection supplies us with two specimens. [Fig. 102] is of amber, cut to appear as if set with a stone. [Fig. 103] is of glass, also made as if set with a jewel. The body of this ring is dark brown with bands of white crossing it; the jewel is yellow.
Fig. 104. | Fig. 105. |
In the later days of the Roman empire the simplicity and purity in decorative design that the Romans obtained from the Greeks, gave way to the ostentatious love of gaudy decoration taught at Byzantium. Jewellery became complicated in design; enrichment was considered before elegance. The old simple form of finger-ring varied much. [Fig. 104] is given by Montfaucon. [Fig. 105] is in the Londesborough collection, and was found upon the hand of a lady’s skeleton, buried with her child in a sarcophagus discovered in 1846, in a field near Amiens, called “Le Camp de Cæsar;” on two of her fingers were rings, one of which was set with ten round pearls, the other (here engraved) is of gold, in which is set a red carnelian, engraved with a rude representation of Jupiter riding on the goat Amalthea. The child also wore a ring with an engraved stone. The whole of the decorations for the person found in this tomb proclaim themselves late Roman work, probably of the time of Diocletian.
Fig. 106. | Fig. 107. |
In 1841 a curious discovery was made at Lyons of the jewel case of a Roman lady, containing a complete trousseau, including the rings here engraved. [Fig. 106] is of gold; the hoop is slightly ovular, and curves upward to a double leaf, supporting three cup-shaped settings, one still retaining its stone, an African emerald. [Fig. 107] is also remarkable for its general form, and still more so for its inscription, VENERI ET TVTELE VOTVM, explained by M. Comarmond as a dedication to Venus and the local Tutela, the guardian of the navigators of the Rhine; hence he infers these jewels to have belonged to the wife of one of these rich traders in the reign of Severus.
Carrying back our researches to the pre-historic era of our own island, and searching in the tumuli of the early British chieftain and his family, we shall discover the utmost simplicity of adornment; not probably the result of indifference to personal decoration, but simply to the rudeness of his position. The wild Gaelic hunter, located in the gloomy fastnesses of wood and morass, had little or no communication with the southern sea-margin of our isle: and when we find the south Cymry of Britain much advanced in civilisation, owing to connection with Belgic Gaul, and Phœnician colonists of Spain, and the Greek colonists of the Mediterranean, we find the tribes inhabiting the midland and northern counties still barbaric, and little advanced in the arts that make life pleasant. Such decoration as they adopted seems to have originated in the basket-weaving, for which the British Islands were famous even at Rome, where noble dames coveted these works from the far-off and mysterious Cassiteridæ. Plaited or interlaced-work, resembling the convolutions of wicker and rush, was imitated in threads of metal; thus circlets for the neck, bracelets for the arms, or rings for the fingers, were but twisted strands of gold.
The simplest form of finger-ring worn by these Gaelic ancestors consisted of a band of metal, merely twisted round to embrace the finger, and open at either end. [Fig. 108] shows one of these rings, found in excavating at Harnham Hill, near Salisbury, a locality celebrated from the very earliest recorded time as the true centre of ancient Britain. This ring was found on the middle finger of the right hand of a person of advanced age. Sometimes several rings were found on one hand. “Among the bones of the fingers of the left hand of an adult skeleton was found a silver ring of solid form, another of spiral form, and a plain gold ring.”[96-*] Mr. Akerman, who superintended these researches, says, “Similar rings have been found at Little Wilbraham, at Linton Heath, at Fairford, and other localities. They are for the most part of an uniform construction, being so contrived that they could be expanded or contracted, and adapted to the size of the finger of the wearer.”[96-†]
Fig. 108. | Fig. 109. |
The prevailing form of the old Celtic finger-ring is shown in [Fig. 109]. It is formed of thick twisted wires of pure gold. This fashion seems to have been in most favour with all the early Celtic tribes, such rings being found in the grave-mounds of Gaul, Germany, Belgium, Denmark, Ireland, and Scotland. A discovery of many similar rings was made in one of the Western Islands of Scotland; they were formed of from three to eight wires each, elaborately and beautifully enwreathed.