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It has however been said that Dschemid, who made known the solar year, introduced the use of the ring.[10]

Touching Pliny’s notion of the antiquity of rings, there is, in Southey’s “Commonplace Book,” (second series,[11]) the following quotation from “Treasurie of Auncient and Moderne Times,” (1619:) “But the good olde man Plinie cannot overreach us with his idle arguments and conjectures, for we read in Genesis that Joseph, who lived above five hundred yeares before the warres of Troy, having expounded the dreame of Pharaoh, king of Ægypt, was, by the sayde prince, made superintendent over his kingdom, and for his safer possession in that estate, he took off his ring from his hand and put it upon Joseph’s hand.” ... “In Moses’s time, which was more than foure hundred yeares before Troy warres, wee find rings to be then in use; for we reade that they were comprehended in the ornaments which Aaron the high priest should weare, and they of his posteritie afterward, as also it was avouched by Josephus. Whereby appeareth plainly, that the use of rings was much more ancient than Plinie reporteth them in his conjectures: but as he was a Pagan, and ignorant in sacred writings, so it is no marvell if these things went beyond his knowledge.”