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It is pretended that seal-rings were an invention of the Lacedemonians, 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.[12]

§ 5. Cylinders, squares and pyramids were forms used for seals prior to the adoption of ring-seals.[13] These settled with the Greeks into the scarabæus 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 opinion that the idea of this convenient form originated with the perforated cylindrical and other seals, which were, with a string passed through them, worn around the neck or from the wrist.[14]