Maggie, my vivacious impish 19-month-old daughter, loves to walk down the street waving her hand—like a little Queen Elizabeth—and saying, “Bye, bye, tree.” She also loves to put her fingers in holes. That yearning appeared suddenly, like a flower that came into bloom overnight. No doubt such intense curiosity is a natural part of growing up, whether in third-millennium A.D. America, Byzantine Greece, Iron Age Assyria or pharaonic Egypt.
That thought struck me as I watched Maggie put her finger through a hole in a book (supposedly made by a caterpillar). I remembered an ancient gold ring owned by Israeli antiquities collector Shlomo Moussaieff. Dating to the fifth century A.D., the ring is a kind of signet ring, with an oval face carrying a depiction of a seven-branched candelabra—reminiscent of the menorahs that lit the Jerusalem Temple before it was destroyed by the Romans in 70 A.D. This lovely ring, however, was made for a small child.
In watching Maggie, then, was I seeing the genesis of the ring? Perhaps 1,600 years ago, two Jewish parents living in the Land of Israel decided to satisfy their daughter’s desire to put her finger through holes by giving her a ring. If so, they were honoring her as a little girl with human impulses, and they were also honoring her as a child with specifically Jewish traditions. Indeed, this means that we are all connected through the ring: that ancient Levantine child, her parents and their even more ancient traditions, and Maggie, whose traditions are not Jewish.
Of course, I was wrong. The ring is a quarter inch in diameter, making it too small even for Maggie. It was made for a newborn infant, not a toddler, though that does not diminish its significance. I simply now recall a smaller Maggie, with that delicate ring on her smaller finger. And now the human impulse is the joy of new life, rather than the more serious business of putting fingers in holes.
What do we really know about the ring? Not much. It is the only example from its period, though contemporaneous bronze and silver rings with menorah depictions have been found. We can make inferences about the wealth, status and beliefs of the ring’s owners, but these would only be tentative and frail possibilities—not knowledge about the past. The problem is that the ring was bought on the antiquities market and was probably originally found in an illegal dig or stolen from a legal dig. As archaeologists say, we do not know its “provenance,” meaning that we do not know where it came from or what was found with it.
Does this mean that the ring is worthless? That we should not talk about it or publish its picture? Is it in every case immoral to purchase unprovenanced objects, since buying such objects provides an incentive for looters? Are some objects so valuable that we must ransom them? Is the ring one of these?
I won’t get into all those questions here, though Archaeology Odyssey will in this issue (see Looting Forum in The Forum) and in the future. I’d rather linger for a while with the delightful image of the ring, puckish Maggie and her ancient Jewish friends.
Maggie, my vivacious impish 19-month-old daughter, loves to walk down the street waving her hand—like a little Queen Elizabeth—and saying, “Bye, bye, tree.” She also loves to put her fingers in holes. That yearning appeared suddenly, like a flower that came into bloom overnight. No doubt such intense curiosity is a natural part of growing up, whether in third-millennium A.D. America, Byzantine Greece, Iron Age Assyria or pharaonic Egypt. That thought struck me as I watched Maggie put her finger through a hole in a book (supposedly made by a caterpillar). I remembered an ancient gold ring owned by […]
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