The
Ring of Mystery
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When my father
gave me this ring for Christmas along with a mummy's hand and
a blue facience figurine of a pharaoh's sarcophagus he told me
it was a glass ring from ancient Egypt. It certainly looks very
old and there are areas of iridescent color on it. It took me
decades before I finally had the idea to hold it up to the light
and was delighted to see it was, in fact, glass. Now I am trying
to find other glass rings like it on the web but have been unable
to. The oldest glass in history was made in Egypt and possibly
in what is now the coast of northern Syria around the same time.
I see examples of Egyptian glass rings but they are completely
different than this ring. This also doesn't appear to be a ring
that was ever worn. The other glass rings are a kind of dark
blue facience which included glass and quartz in the mixture.
My ring is a yellowish green color very similar to the naturally
occuring desert glass found in the Sahara Desert created by the
heat of an asteroid's aerial explosion 26 million years ago.
The Egyptians sometimes used this glass in their jewelry. Maybe
that's what it is but I still don't know what it was used for.
I'm guessing it was probably discovered by tomb robbers so it
was probably of some value if it was purposely buried. |
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King Tutankhamun's
Pectoral with scarab carved from green Libyan desert glass from
1327 BC |
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The museum
caption "Green Libyan desert glass" is referring to
the Libyan Desert glass aka Great Sand Sea glass which is a substance
found in areas in the eastern Sahara, in the deserts of eastern
Libya and western Egypt. Fragments of desert glass can be found
over large areas. They've been dated to 26 million years ago.
Libyan
Desert Glass |
In addition
to the glass ring gift that same year my father also gave me
what he said was an actual mummy's hand and also a turquoise
blue facience figure like a small Pharoah's sarcophagus. I'll
post a pic later. It appeared to be authentic. It's possible
that none of my Egyptian artifacts were actually from ancient
Egypt since I have since learned that at least in the 1950's
there was a trade in fake mummy parts. People in Egypt used similar
chemicals to treat modern body parts and make them appear as
being from thousands of years old mummies. The one I had for
decades certainly appeared to be very old and it was definitely
a human hand but I never took it to be authenticated. I got rid
of it because of certain scary things that happened involving
the hand. That's a story that virtually no one has ever heard
because it's very strange but it happened. |
