gems, glyptic, engraved gems, agate, cameo, intaglio, ancient gems, Rome, Greece, ancient jewelry, rings, Ptolemaic finger rings

The focus of this paper will be a category of artifacts defined in Russian publications as “Ptolemaic finger rings” and making probably the largest and most mass evidence of contacts between Hellenistic Egypt and the North Black Sea Area in the 3rd century B.C. The term “Ptolemaic finger rings” was proposed by Russian scholars O. Neverov (Neverov 1974; Neverov 1976) and M. Treister (Treister 1982; Treister 1985: 126–132) for large bronze rings with oval shields (ca. 3 × 2.5 cm) bearing a profile image of a Ptolemaic king or queen and, sometimes, with a relief on their shanks. A variant of these artifacts are the rings with images not on shields but on enlarged shanks. Sometimes finger rings with other types of image, first of all showing deities (Cybele, Athena, Heracles, Artemis, the Dioskouroi), are treated together with the “Ptolemaic rings” (Neverov 1974: 112–113; Treister 1982: 67–68, 70), which is hardly appropriate. Most of these objects from the North Black Sea Area belong now to the collections of the State Hermitage, St. Petersburg, Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow, and the State Historical Museum, Moscow. Unfortunately, the publications of the “Ptolemaic rings” by O. Neverov, M. Treister and, more recently, by S. Finogenova (Finogenova 2001) are far from being comprehensive; specifically, they do not give accurate descriptions, let alone pictures, of all the objects they take account of, and quite a number of new finds and purchases have been added to the museum collections since these publications appeared (for instance, our colleague D. Zhuravlyov of the State Historical Museum signaled a recent acquisition of a sizable collection of these objects). When approaching this topic we had in mind to assess the number of unaccounted “Ptolemaic finger rings” in the museums of Moscow and St. Petersburg; but we gave up this task as we assessed its real magnitude and responsibility. Nevertheless, the existing publications do give an adequate idea of the territorial and chronological distribution of these finds and provide a sufficient base for their interpretation.