The History Of The Gold Ring

The gold ring is the most famous and instantly recognizable symbol of the joining of a man and a woman in the institution of marriage, and has a long, wide spread and mysterious history. Its beginnings lie in 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 people and from plants growing on its’ banks were the first wedding rings fashioned. Sedges, rushes and reeds, growing beside the Nile were twisted and braided into rings for fingers and bracelets for wrists.

The ring is a circle and this is the symbol of eternity for the Egyptians as well as many other cultures. It has no beginning and no end, like time. It returnes to itself, like life; and the shape was worshipped in the form of the Sun and the Moon. The hole in the centre of the ring is not just space; it is important in its own right as the symbol of the gateway, or door; leading to things and events unknown to man.

Therefore it is easy to see how the ring and the gift of a ring began to be associated with love, in the hope that this most fragile 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 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 year before wear and tear took their in 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.

When in later years, the arts of metallurgy became known this 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 worn more for show than sentiment and used to indicate wealth. Before coinage gold rings were used for currency and often stored away until the owners were actively trading.

In early Rome it was iron that was adopted as the metal of choice rather than copper or brass as mostly elsewhere. This symbolized the strength of love a man felt for his chosen woman, though these rings his have a tendency to rust!

The act of giving and acceptance of the ring was now also considered to be legally binding and therefore enforceable. This indicated that the woman was the property of the man to some views but in also protected her rights as a future wife.

Gold or silver rings were given on occasions, to show the world the bridegroom trusted his betrothed with his valuable property, and to symbolize this further, the ring was sometimes shaped as a key rather than a normal circular band. This was not presented at the wedding as the custom nowadays, but when he carried her i across the threshold of her new home.

Gold was rapidly promoted to first choice and later in medieval Europe gemstones were again a common addition. With rubies chosen for their color of red like a heart, sapphires, blue like the sky above, or most valued and sought after of all; the diamond.

In renaissance Italy silver made a comeback, and was now selected for the new idea of the engagement, or betrothal ring. These were often highly ornate and usually inlaid with niello, (which is a very decorative form of enamel engraving, colored in black to stand in contrast to the bright metal) on a round or oval bezel, rather than traditional simple bands, they had clasping hands emerging from the hoop at the front.

Silver became more popular for a time in the seventeenth century in Europe were they were used for wedding rings at the height of the fashion for’ poesy’, or posy rings; this comes from the word ‘poesy’ meaning a ‘love poem’. They were sentimentally inscribed with such, around the wedding rings, either within or without, and often faith and hope were included in the verse as well. These were widely used, as frequent referrals to them in the works of Shakespeare show.. Gold rings however, began to take over again later, and pushed back silver to the Italian idea of engagement again, with a golden duplicate of the original replacing it on the wedding day.

Irish folklore considered it to be bad luck or even illegal to be married with a ring made of anything but gold. However, this was never so in practice, and many different metals were used. A gold ring though, was often lent, and taken back, after the ceremony, for weddings throughout Europe for those who could not afford one,

Other world superstitions include the absolutely essential point of making sure the ring is a perfect fit, for woe betides the future of the marriage if it isn’t. A too-tight ring might point to painful jealousy or the stifling of one party by the other. Too loose, and a parting of the ways through careless acts or forgetfulness is indicated as a future danger to watch for.

The Church of England holds no brook with this however, and does not concern itself with the size or material of the ring so long as it is there. An irony, and a change of heart for sure, as the early Protestant puritans claimed that wedding rings were pagan and not to be used by the Godly. They were further enraged on the subject by a Catholic legend that Joseph and Mary had used one constructed either of onyx or amethyst; and that various churches in Europe had throughout history claimed to hold the ring (which was capable of performing miracles) to attract pilgrims to their vicinity to spend money and hence increase the wealth of the competing abbeys.