It is thought that seal-rings were an invention of the Lacedemonians, (Lacedaemonia, is one of the peripheral units of Greece) who, not content with locking their coffers, added a seal; for which purpose they made use of worm-eaten wood, with which they impressed wax or soft wood; and after this they learned to engrave seals.
Cylinders, squares and pyramids were forms used for seals prior to the adoption of ring-seals. These settled with the Greeks into the scarabaeus or beetle, that is to say, a stone something like the half of a walnut, with its convexity wrought into the form of a beetle, while the flat under surface contained the inscription for the seal. The Greeks retained this derivable form until they thought of dispensing with the body of the beetle, only preserving for the inscription the flat oval which the base presented, and which they ultimately set in rings. This shows how ring-seals came into form. Many of the Egyptian and other ring-seals are on swivel, and we are of the opinion that the idea of this convenient form originated with perforated cylindrical and other seals, which were, with a string passed through them, worn around the neck or from the wrist.
Photo courtesy of Guillaume Blanchard, July 2004
The sculpture of signets was, probably, the first use of gem engraving, and this was derived from the common source of all the arts, India. Signets of lapis lazuli and emerald have been found with Sanscrit inscriptions, presumed to be of an antiquity beyond all record. The natural transmission of the arts was from India to Egypt, and our collections abound with intaglio and cameo hieroglyphics, figures of Isis, Osiris, the lotus, the crocodile, and the whole symbolic Egyptian mythology wrought upon jaspers, emeralds, basalts, bloodstones, turquoises, etc. Mechanical skill attained a great excellence at an early period. The stones of the Jewish highpriests' breast-plate were engraved with the names of the twelve tribes, and of those stones one was a diamond (?). The Greek gems generally exhibit the figure nude; the Romans, draped. The Greeks were chiefly intaglios.
It is generally understood that the ancients greatly excelled the moderns in gem engraving, and that the art has never been carried to the highest perfection in modern times. Mr. Henry Weigall, however, states that "this supposition is erroneous, and has probably arisen from the fact of travelers supposing that the collections of gems and impressions that they have made in Italy are exclusively the works of Italian artists; such, however, is not the case, and I have myself had the satisfaction of pointing out to many such collectors, that the most admired specimens in their collections were the works of English artists."
