ing.8
Here we have early Greek art transforming and adapting Oriental forms
of metal engraving, to be succeeded, more than five centuries later,
by the great gem-engravings of the palmy days of the art of Ionia and
Greece.
Among the Cyprian rings of the Mycenaean period, about 1000 b.c., in
the British Museum, is a double gold ring which had been evidently
inlaid with some vitreous substance, all but faint traces of which have
now disappeared. This was found in a site near Famagusta, Cyprus, that
has been satisfactorily identified with the spot where the Greeks under
Teucer are said to have established a settlement on their return from
the siege of Troy. Other gold rings discovered here at the same time,
in 1896, have plain hoops, with a small cylindrical ornament strung on
the hoop, to serve in place of a bezel with setting. Still another of
these rings has, on one side, an extension squared off at the corners,
making a long and narrow flat surface on the outside of the hoop ;
along its edge runs a beaded ornamentation.9
The
oldest Greek ring bearing an inscription is one believed to belong to
the late Mycenaean period. The gold hoop has engraved upon it the
Cypriot syllables Le-na-ko, possibly meaning the name Lenagoras. It was
found with other ornaments in a grave near Lanarka, Cyprus.10 The similarity of the name Lanarka with the
8
Strena Helbigena, 73 ; Journal of Hellenic Studies, vol. xxi, p. 155,
fig. 33 ; p. 159, fig. 39 ; Schliemanri Mycenae and Tiryns, pp. 354,
360.
9 See F. H. Marshall, op. cit., p. 3 ; rings from Enkomi, Cyprus.
10
Pauly's Real Encyclopädie der Altertumswissenschaft, vol. ix, pt. i,
col. 827 ; Stuttgart, 1914 ; Marshall, Catalogue of the Finger Rings,
Greek, Etruscan, and Roman, in the British Museum, London, 1907, No.
574.
