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Lot Essay
The ring has a plain hoop, circular in section, tapering at each end where it joins the leaf-shaped bezel. Engraved on the bezel is a cow in profile to the right suckling her calf, with a papyrus umble to the right.
When R. Zahn cataloged the Schiller Collection, he considered this ring to be Egyptian, and indeed, the stirrup-shaped ring made its first appearance in Egypt during the New Kingdom and continued through to the end of the dynastic era. However, the shape was later adopted by the Greeks during the Archaic period, and it may be that they borrowed the type from the Egyptians. For an Egyptian style example in the Walters Art Museum engraved with a Hathor cow on a boat within a papyrus thicket, see no. 129 in A. Garside, ed., Jewelry, Ancient to Modern, where it is cataloged as New Kingdom but is more likely to be from the Late Period, thus contemporaneous with the present ring. In Egyptian art, the Hathor cow is typically shown suckling the king, while the scene on the ring presented here of a cow suckling a calf is more Greek in spirit and style. For the subject, compare the slightly earlier Greek carnelian scarab, no. 485 in H.B. Walters, Catalogue of the Engraved Gems & Cameos, Greek, Etruscan & Roman in the British Museum. The papyrus umble on our ring does link it to Egypt, and it may be that it was made by a Greek at the trading emporium of Naukratis in the Nile Delta, where other Greek style rings have been found.
When R. Zahn cataloged the Schiller Collection, he considered this ring to be Egyptian, and indeed, the stirrup-shaped ring made its first appearance in Egypt during the New Kingdom and continued through to the end of the dynastic era. However, the shape was later adopted by the Greeks during the Archaic period, and it may be that they borrowed the type from the Egyptians. For an Egyptian style example in the Walters Art Museum engraved with a Hathor cow on a boat within a papyrus thicket, see no. 129 in A. Garside, ed., Jewelry, Ancient to Modern, where it is cataloged as New Kingdom but is more likely to be from the Late Period, thus contemporaneous with the present ring. In Egyptian art, the Hathor cow is typically shown suckling the king, while the scene on the ring presented here of a cow suckling a calf is more Greek in spirit and style. For the subject, compare the slightly earlier Greek carnelian scarab, no. 485 in H.B. Walters, Catalogue of the Engraved Gems & Cameos, Greek, Etruscan & Roman in the British Museum. The papyrus umble on our ring does link it to Egypt, and it may be that it was made by a Greek at the trading emporium of Naukratis in the Nile Delta, where other Greek style rings have been found.