In the collection of Mr. Octavius Morgan, F.R.S., F.S.A., is a Jewish ring enamelled with figures in relief, representing the Creation, the Temptation, and the Fall of Adam and Eve; date, sixteenth century.
‘Paradise’ rings.
In the cathedral library at Chichester is an ancient gem having the Gnostic equivalent of the blessed name Jehovah. This was used by Seffrid, Bishop of Chichester (died 1159), as his episcopal signet.
Reliquary ring.
In the Gérente Collection is a reliquary ring of silver-gilt elaborately ornamented.
The Bessborough Collection has a ring with a frog or toad cut in a magnificent almandine, of Roman work—a favourite device in the later Imperial times, the animal typifying a new birth by its total changes of form and habits, and hence adopted into the list of Christian symbols.
The Rev. C. W. King notices in his ‘Antique Gems,’ among some ‘highly curious and undoubted Christian subjects engraved on gems, one of the most interesting—a red jasper set in an elegant antique gold ring, the shank formed of a corded pattern, in wire, of a novel and beautiful design. The stone bears, in neatly-formed letters: ΙΗCΟΥC-ΦΕΟΥ-ΥΙΟC-ΤΗΡΕ, “Jesus, Son of God, keep us.” Another, of equal interest and of the earliest period of our religion, a fish cut on a fine emerald (quarter of an inch square), is set in an exquisitely-moulded six-sided ring, with fluted and knotted shank, imitating a bent reed, very similar to a bronze one figured in Caylus.’
The first of the annexed illustrations represents an early Christian ring with the symbol of an anchor.