THE INTELLECTUAL OBSERVER. 



FEBRUARY, 186 



ANCIENT JEWELEY. 



BY WILLIAM DUTHIE. 

 (With a Coloured Plate.) 



Antiquarians, acute, learned, and indefatigable, have taken 

 such pains to describe, among other ancient remains, the 

 specimens of Egyptian jewelry which have been discovered in 

 recent times, that it might appear unnecessary to treat of 

 them further. After the elaborate explanations of Prisse 

 d' Avenues, Daly, Sir Gardiner Wilkinson, Dr. Birch, and 

 others, of Egyptian ornaments, and the voluminous account 

 given by Mr. . Layard of Assyrian antiquities, there might 

 appear to be a certain presumption in any attempt to enlarge 

 upon a subject which had been already so amply and so ably 

 treated. 



But, however carefully these ancient and interesting relics 

 may have been described in an archaeological point of view, 

 they have never yet been dealt with in a practical way as 

 pieces of workmanship ; and it is in this light it is purposed 

 to consider them here. It is evident that, so considered, they 

 offer a very interesting field, not merely for speculation, but 

 for the accumulation of proofs directly tending to show the 

 progress made in the finer mechanical processes of art- work- 

 manship in those early ages. To a workman, testing them by 

 his own special knowledge, they may give evidence of a 

 character different from, and not less interesting than, that 

 offered to the antiquarian and the philosopher. 



Acting upon this idea, the pieces of jewelry in the Coloured 

 Plate have been selected as much for the purpose of illustrating 

 certain points of workmanship, as for their marked character 

 and beauty ; to show, in fact, what advance the Egyptians 

 and Assyrians had made in the arts of casting, chasing, 

 soldering, stone-cutting, and other more technical processes in 

 the manufacture of personal ornaments. It is believed that 

 the objects chosen have not hitherto been engraved, and these 



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