Originating as a minor sect of Second Temple Judaism, Christianity centred on the life and ministry of a single charismatic leader, Jesus of Nazareth, called Christ. Living in the Roman province of Judaea from perhaps 5 BC to AD 25 – it is widely accepted that the Before Christ/Anno Domini system is based on an erroneous date for his birth – Christian theology asserts that Jesus of Nazareth was conceived by the Holy Spirit (the third element of the tripartite nature of God), born to a virgin named Mary, performed a number of miracles, and founded the Christian Church. His death by crucifixion, at the age of around thirty, was apparently followed by his resurrection and ascension into Heaven, from whence he will one day return. The death of Christ supposedly absolved all those who followed him of the original sin, the misdeeds of Adam and Eve which removed them from the Garden of Eden and the special favour of God. Also revered in Islam, certain sects of Vashnaivist Hinduism, some Buddhists, the Baha’i faith, and Druze, Jesus of Nazareth is most notable as the inspiration for Christianity, the largest religion in the modern world as measured by number of adherents, having been actively and often brutally exported from the Mediterranean by first Late Roman, then Mediaeval, and finally Early Modern European political and cultural colonialism, as well as the evangelical efforts of apolitical individuals and societies.

From the earliest days of Christianity, there has been disagreement regarding the interpretation of the central holy text, the Bible, and around the organisation and management of the central religious institution, the Church. The most notable schisms resulted in the three main sects of Christianity: Catholicism, Protestantism, and Orthodoxy. Among the very earliest Christians, an important subgroup was Gnosticism, whose name derives from the Greek word gnosis, which refers to a kind of personal or spiritual knowledge, as opposed to eidein (intellectual knowledge) and techne (technical knowledge or skill). The word gnosis was especially associated with the Mystery Cults, sects of the pagan Graeco-Roman religion in which individuals were initiated to special codes of knowledge, and it is possible that this tells us something about the cultural-societal origins of Gnosticism. Most scholars agree, however, that Gnosticism had Judaeo-Christian origins, appearing in nonrabbinical and Christian sects around the late First Century AD. With roots predating Christianity, Gnosticism postulates a remote, supreme Godhead known as the Monad. From him emanate lower-level divine beings known as Aeons. Most significant among the Aeons is the Demiurge, the creator of the physical universe. Aspects of the divinity of the Aeons fall to the newly-created Earth and are incorporated into the creation of human beings. These aspects are redeemed when humans achieve gnosis, esoteric or intuitive knowledge of the divine.

With apparent influence from Neoplatonic philosophy, as well as Buddhism and Zoroastrianism, Gnosticism was derided as heresy by various early Christian groups. Important Gnostic texts were destroyed, having been rejected from the Biblical Canon (the accepted ‘official’ version) at various canon meetings in Rome (AD 382), Hippo Regius (AD 393), and Carthage (AD 397 and AD 419). Important Gnostic texts were known only in fragments until the AD 1945 discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library, thirteen leatherbound codices found in Egypt and now in the Coptic Museum in Cairo (numbered NHC I to XIII). While Gnosticism was rejected by the early church authorities, this rejection was not wholesale. Indeed, some scholars see Gnostic ideas in the canon Bible, largely in the Gospel According to John and the Book of Revelations, attributed to John the Apostle and John of Patmos respectively, who may have been the same person. A further, rejected, gospel, the Apocrypha of John, is also attributed to John the Apostle, and is a central Gnostic text. Gnosticism survives to the present day, largely in a religious group known as the Mandaeans, who occupy parts of modern Iran, and, since the Second World War, a number of neo-Gnostic churches focused on France and the United States of America. However, Gnosticism was heavily persecuted by early Church Fathers and by the first Christian Roman authorities. Since Gnosticism is an individualistic, personal practice, which seeks private knowledge of the divine, it remained possible to practice it in secret, and this is the primary reason for its survival. Indeed, Gnosticism actively prohibits proselytising and evangelising.

Many of the most important Gnostic practices were, what Christians at least considered to be, magic. Practiced for millennia across the Mediterranean and Near East, magic – what we might define as miraculous occurrences not attributable to the direct intervention of the primary deity – was, before the Christian Era, a commonplace. The later Romans recognised two main lineages of magic, the Israelite or Jewish tradition and the Persian tradition. Gnosticism – an ostensibly Judaeo-Christian offshoot with heavy Persianate influences – drew on both traditions. The Romans, and previous civilisations, had accepted magic, and singled out for punishment the aspects of religion which caused harm – the veneficium, the maleficium, and the religiones illicitae. From the Second Century AD, however, Christianity began to demonise magic altogether as the result of Satanic manipulation. This fascinating Gnostic ring dates to this period of demonisation, and it is possible that this social change resulted in aspects of the ring’s design.

This ring has been identified as a ‘seal ring’ on the basis that it consists of an inscribed intaglio in a large hinged bezel. However, it should be noted that the intaglio is not very deeply carved. Additionally, the Greek letters on the intaglio are not inscribed in reverse, and therefore were they to be stamped into wax or clay, the letters would appear backwards in the seal. Finally, whereas most seal rings do not have any attempt to highlight the negative (carved) areas, since they are meant to be stamped, the carved areas of this ring are highlighted in white pigment. The intaglio is carved from bloodstone, a green gemstone with red flecks, which is known geologically as heliotrope. For the Gnostics, bloodstone symbolised longevity, wealth, and courage. Bloodstone was also believed to strengthen the stomach, and to dispel melancholia. The beautifully-carved lion dominates the ring. Simplified, such that the lion’s details are obvious even at this small scale, considerable effort has been expended on rendering his long mane, rubs, svelte muscular torso, well-studied legs, and large paws. The lion is depicted with his mouth open, in the action of roaring. Lions had multiple meanings in Gnosticism, associated with the power and radiance of the sun, regal authority, the symbol of Christ as the ‘lion of Judah’, the struggle with negative forces, alchemical transformation, and dualism. Later Gnostic texts also deal with the astrological symbol Leo as representative of the heart, intuition, or the origin of gnosis.

Above the lion sit seven seven-pointed stars, irregularly positioned, around each of which are short words of between four and six letters written in Greek characters. Arranged in circles, it is difficult to tell where each word ends or begins, and one must use knowledge of the sound-patterns of Greek to come to a reasonable guess of what each says. The current author’s reading (going clockwise from the lion’s head) gives: sinea, kaniel, konel, elina (or linea), rila, kealri, and irelē. The number seven was associated with the seven Classical Planets. i.e. astronomical objects visible with the naked eye, which appear to move in relation to the ‘fixed’ stars. Each of these ‘planets’ – the Sun, the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn – was associated in Gnostic thought with an archōn (from the Greek for ‘ruler’ or ‘leader’), seven world-governing powers created by the Demiurge. The words written around the stars would appear to be ‘barbarous names’, unintelligible words (barbarous originates in the Greek word barbarophonoi, literally ‘people whose language sounds like baa baa’) which may each be one of the names of these archōns. While most of these words do not seem to have a traceable etymology, two – utterances two (kaniel) and four (elina or linae) – may be etymologically sound names. Kaniel is an early Hebraic variant of the name Daniel, derived from the Hebrew phrase dan i El, ‘God is my judge’. Elina, if that is the correct reading, would be a variant of the Greek Helena, a feminine name referring to the light of the sun (derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *swei-, meaning ‘to shine’). The name Kaniel is known from other Gnostic texts, while the presence of the feminine name Elina would seem to parallel with the Gnostic belief that one archōn, associated with the planet Venus, was female.

The intaglio is set in a rotating bronze bezel, held in place with a pin which runs through both the bronze frame and the gemstone itself, and which is blunted at both ends. From this hangs the simple loop of the ring, which is decorated with bands of six ridges on each side, now slightly eroded. This motif is related to Ancient Egyptian ring-making. The intaglio has a slightly domed bronze cover. The cover, and the fact that the bezel can be rotated inwards, suggests that the gemstone was meant, in normal circumstances, to be hidden. This would fit with the Gnostic belief that esoteric knowledge should be hidden until each individual comes to it privately. Additionally, given this ring’s putative Second Century AD date, it is possible that the magical nature of this ring – the speaking of the names of the archōns listed would have been an important ritual and magic practice – would have put the owner at risk of persecution by the Romano-Christian authorities. Hiding this ring under a seemingly innocuous cover – and even turning it inwards to the finger – would have enabled the owner to wear an object of magico-spiritual importance without being caught.