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Description: | A small Roman hexagonal gold finger-ring set with a red jasper intaglio. The hoop, now slightly squashed, has broad angular shoulders. The oval intaglio is set flush with the surface of the rectangular bezel. The intaglio is finely-engraved with a combination: a bearded Silenus head conjoined back-to-back to an inverted, clean-shaven, youthful head, probably Pan. The sinuous motif that separates/ unites the heads is probably an elephant's trunk with stylised palm branch, but it may also be 'read' as facial hair and a long hair lock for the Silenus. Spalling of the surface of the intaglio in the region beneath the chin of the Silenus and above the head of the ?Pan makes it hard to determine whether a third conjoined head once existed there.The ring is of Henig's Type IX and is closely-paralleled by an example from Jewry Wall, Leicester (Henig 1978, no. 385), while the intaglio may be compared to the examples of combinations, the majority in red jasper, in Henig 1978, nos. 373 - 385. Date: Probably 3rd-4th century AD.Dimensions: external, 19.4 x 13.1 mm; intaglio 10 x 7.5 mm. Weight: 7.2 g.Reference: Henig, M. 1978, A corpus of Roman engraved gemstones from British sites (Oxford).
Original Image | Publisher: | http://finds.org.uk | Source: | Portable Antiquities | Identifier: | http://finds.org.uk/database/artefacts/r... | Go to resource |
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