50 
House & Garden 
Hercules and, the Lion, a 
Greek cameo. After Thomas 
Woolridge’s etching of the 
original gem 
COLLECTING 
ENGRAVED GEMS 
Both Ancient and Later Examples of the Glyptic Art 
Are Available for the Gem Enthusiast 
GARDNER TEALL 
Greek 
cameo in 
R e n a i s - 
sance set- 
ing 
D IFFICULT indeed would it be to 
conceive of a time when the love of 
jewelry did not play some part in per¬ 
sonal adornment. If prehistoric man en¬ 
graved figures of mammoths on selected 
pieces of ivory tusk, that same 
decorative instinct as surely had 
led him to conceive the begin¬ 
nings of trinkets for the person. 
The ancientry of historic jewelry 
is well established. Babylonia, As¬ 
syria, Egypt, Greece, Rome—civi¬ 
lizations of these ancient states 
produced marvelous pieces of the 
jeweler’s craft, things that reached 
so high a state of special perfec¬ 
tion that it is the despair of the 
modern craftsman to attempt to 
compete with their workmanship. 
From earliest times engraved 
gems have found great favor in 
jewelry. The ancient signet rings 
which have come down to us stand 
testimony to this, also the Biblical 
references in the Book of Genesis 
and elsewhere,—the signet with 
which Darius sealed up the lion’s 
den (Gen. xii. 42), the signet 
which Judah found so discomfit¬ 
ing (Gen. xxxviii) and the signet 
with which Queen Jezebel signed 
the false letters about the vine¬ 
yard of Naboth (Dan. vi. 17), to 
note a few instances of such men¬ 
tion. Undoubtedly these signet 
rings were set with engraved 
gems, cut intaglio. In the British 
Museum there is an egg-shaped 
piece of pink-veined marble, some 
2/4" long, pierced from base to 
apex and engraved with a Baby¬ 
lonian inscription which has been 
deciphered to read as follows, in 
translation: “I, Sargon the King, 
King of Agade have dedicated to 
Samos in Sappira”. This ancient 
intaglio has been determined by 
authorities to have been cut 3900 B. C., 
5721 years ago, think of it! One of the 
most ancient evidences of sophisticated art. 
The Egyptian engraved gems in the form 
of the scarab (the sacred scarabseus beetle) 
were in general use as early as 2500 B. C., 
thirteen hundred years after the reign of the 
Babylonian King Sargon. From an epi¬ 
gram in the Greek Anthology, we learn that 
the sly 
A Roman 
cameo of 
Harpokrates 
mounted in 
gold 
A Roman intaglio 
signet ring of head 
of a man 
An archaic Greek 
intaglio of Boreas 
and Orytheia 
A Roman cameo of 
Amazons, in a mod¬ 
ern setting 
Engraved gems are mainly cut in two ways — intaglio, i.e. cut 
in, and cameo, i.e. cut in relief. The two directly above are 
cameo cut. To the left, Europa cut in sardonyx, dating from 
the Classical Roman Period; to the right, Psyche, a Greek cameo 
cut in amethyst. Illustrations by courtesy of the Metropolitan 
Museum of Art 
Cleopatra’s signet ring was set 
with an amethyst engraved with a 
figure of Methe, who was the god¬ 
dess presiding over drunkenness 
and who was depicted as a nude 
figure surrounded by various 
symbols,—cups, hydra, thyros, 
grapes, vine, etc. The engraved 
gems of steatite, rock crystal, 
carnelian and chalcedony of the 
Mycenaean period in Greek civ¬ 
ilization survived the Dorian 
invasion of 1100 B. C. which 
submerged that power and un¬ 
doubtedly gave impetus to the 
engraved gems of the later and 
glorious period of Greek glyptic 
art which produced the incom¬ 
parable intaglios cut between 450 
and 300 B. C. The Greek en¬ 
graved gems of the archaic period 
(down to the end of the Fifth 
Century B. C.) were, mainly, 
scaraboid in form. An excep¬ 
tionally fine agate gem of this 
sort in the collection of the Brit¬ 
ish Museum represents a dancing 
satyr holding forth a drinking 
cup. The minute details are ex¬ 
quisitely wrought and it is, in¬ 
deed, a monument of art of the 
Greek gem engravers of the time 
(circa 500 B. C.) 
The engraved gems of the fin¬ 
est Greek period (450-300 B. C.) 
are more rarely to be met with 
than those of the earlier and later 
periods. The ancient engraved 
gems were mostly cut intaglio, 
that is to say, the device was cut 
in forming depressions which, 
when used as a seal would give 
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