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The History of the Wedding Ring
The wedding ring, that most famous and instantly recognizable symbol of the (hopefully perpetual) joining of a man and a woman as husband and wife in the institution of marriage, has a long, wide spread and mysterious history. Its beginnings lie in the deserts of North Africa, where the ancient Egyptian civilization sprang up along the fertile flood plains of the river Nile. This river was bringer of all fortune and life to the Pharaoh's people and from plants growing on its' banks were the first wedding rings fashioned. Sedges, rushes and reeds, growing alongside the well-known papyrus were twisted and braided into rings for fingers and larger bracelets for wrists. The ring is of course a circle and this was the symbol of eternity for the Egyptians as well as many other ancient cultures. It had no beginning and no end, like time. It returned to itself, like life; and the shape was worshipped in the form of the Sun and the Moon. The hole in the center of the ring is not just space either; it is important in its own right as the symbol of the gateway, or door; leading to things and events both known and unknown. It is not difficult therefore, to see how the ring and the gift of a ring began to be associated with love, in the hope that this most worthy of emotions could take on the characteristics of the circle and capture eternity. They wore it like we do today, on the third finger of the left hand, because of a belief that the vein of that finger directly traveled from the heart. This legend was later taken up by the Greeks, when they conquered Egypt under the generalship of Alexander the Great in 332 B.C. and from them passed onto the Romans, who called this the 'vena amoris', which is Latin for 'the vein of love'. These early rings usually lasted about a single year before wear and tear took their inevitable toll. Hemp was probably the first choice, but some decided that they wanted a longer lasting material, and opted for leather, bone or ivory to craft their token of love. The Art of Metallurgy Takes OverWhen in later years, the arts of metallurgy became known this naturally took over, but surprisingly only very gradually. These early metal rings were often quite clumsily made and uneven in the extreme, so for wedding gifts they had precious and semi-precious stones set into them and these can be seen represented by hieroglyphs in Egyptian tombs. At this time Jewellery was usually more for show than sentiment and used to express wealth. Before coinage gold rings were used for currency and often hidden away until the owners were actively trading. |
