AMULETS: ANCIENT, MEDIEVAL, OEIENTAL 321
It
is difficult to see any other origin for the scaraboid, or imperfect
scarab form, than that afforded by the Egyptian scarabs, some of which
date back to about 4000 b.c. Whether
we can literally say that the scaraboid was introduced into Babylon by
the Egyptians may be open to question, as the form itself appears to
have been evolved by Etruscans and Greeks. Unquestionably the scaraboid
was much more easily shaped than the scarab proper, and for those
traders who wished large supplies for commercial purposes at a low
cost, this was by no means a negligible quality.
The
evolution of the ring from the cylindrical seal is of course purely a
matter of conjecture. Here, as is often the case in a chain or series
of fossil remains, we have a succession of types which may be connected with one another genetically, but which must not be so connected. That is to say, we cannot prove the affirmative and can only point to a probability.
Many
cut and engraved stones, some of which had evidently been used as
talismans, have been washed up on the shore at Alexandria, Egypt. Not
all of these are completed, some being only half worked, as though the
engraver had become dissatisfied with his design, or had found a flaw
in the material, or that they had been lost from boats or ships. It has
been conjectured that these half-completed gems were the work of
household jewellers employed in the palaces of Alexandria.10 In Mas'ûdi's "Meadows of Gold" we read that in his time, in the tenth century a.D., there
was what he terms "a fishery for precious stones" on the seacoast near
Alexandria, Egypt. To account for this he relates two bits
"
Oskar Schneider, " Ueber Anschwemmung von antiken Arbeitsmaterial an
der Alexandriner Küste," in " Naturwissenschaftliche Beiträge zur
Geographie und Kulturgeschichte," Dresden, 1883, pp. 4, 5, 6. 21
