Читать книгу The History and Poetry of Finger-rings онлайн

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In the work of Count Caylus, there is a vignette of a ring of bronze, remarkable from its size and the subject upon it.[57] The collet or collar of the ring is an inch in height, and eleven lines in thickness. The figure upon it is an ox—or, as the author we have referred to calls it, a cow, recumbent and swaddled, or covered by draperies; and it wears a collar, to which hangs, according to this author, a bell. He considers that it was made when the Romans wore them of an excessive size, and while Gaul was under the dominion of the former. He does not give any guess at the intention or meaning of the subject. We believe it was, originally, Egyptian; and made in memory of the sacred Bull Apis, (found in tombs,) honored by the Egyptians as an image of the soul of Osiris and on the idea that his soul migrated from one Apis to another in succession. And as to what Caylus considers a bell, we are inclined to designate a bag. In Dr. Abbott’s collection of Egyptian Antiquities are not only mummies of these sacred bulls, but also the skulls of others, and over the head of one is suspended a large bag, found in the pits with the bulls, and supposed to be used to carry their food.

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