Book Description

This important catalogue of 860 Roman engraved gems and finger-rings in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford is the third in the Beazley Archive series "Studies in Gems and Jewellery". The catalogue is themed under the major headings of gods; goddesses; followers of deities and muses; personifications; portraits and figure studies; children's rings; scenes from daily life; theatrical subjects; animals, birds and other natural subjects; mythological subjects; symbolic subjects; astrological subjects; magical gems; Jewish and Christian subjects; inscriptions. Overall, the items are catalogued with the aim of producing a summary inventory that details the nature of the collection as built up over the years, the mechanisms by which the Ashmolean came to acquire the various pieces, and the degree to which they survive and can be related to the documentary record. (Volume I in the series was A Collection of Classical and Eastern Intaglios, Rings and Cameos (2003) and Volume II Classical Phoenician Scarabs (2004))