unchanged habit of Eastern life renders
the custom as common now as it was three thousand years ago. When Tamar
desired some certain token by which she should again recognise Judah,
she made her first request for his signet, and when the time of
recognition arrived, it was duly and undoubtingly acknowledged by
all.[74-[+]] Fig. 76 exhibits the usual form assumed by these signets.
It has a somewhat clumsy movable handle, attached to a cross-bar passing
through a cube, engraved on each of its facets with symbolical devices.
Sir John Gardner Wilkinson[75-*] speaks of it as one of the largest and
most valuable he has seen, containing twenty pounds' worth of gold. "It
consisted of a massive ring, half an inch in its largest diameter,
bearing an oblong plinth, on which the devices were engraved, one inch
long, six-tenths in its greatest and four-tenths in its smallest
breadth. On one face was the name of a king, the successor of Amunoph
III., who lived about B.C. 1400; on the other a lion, with the legend
'lord of strength,' referring to the monarch: on one side a scorpion,
and on the other a crocodile." Judah's signet was, of course, formed of
less valuable material, and had probably a single device only.

[Illustration: Fig. 76.]

[Illustration: Fig. 77.]

The lighter kind of hooped signet, as generally worn at a somewhat more
recent era in Egypt, is shown in Fig. 77. The gold loop passes through a
small figure of the sacred beetle, the flat under side being engraved
with the device of a crab. It is cut in carnelian, and once formed part
of the collection of Egyptian antiquities gathered by our consul at
Cairo--Henry Salt, the friend of Burckhardt and Belzoni, who first
employed the latter in Egyptian researches, and to whom our national
museum owes many of its chief Egyptian treasures.

From a passage in Jeremiah (xxii. 24) it appears to have been customary
for the Jewish nation to wear the signet-ring on the right hand. The
words of the Lord are uttered against Zedekiah--"though Coniah, the son
of Jehoiakim, King of Judah, were the signet on my right hand, yet would
I pluck thee thence."

The transition from such signets to the solid finger-ring was natural
and easy. The biblical record treats them as contemporaneous even at
that early era. Thus the story of Judah and Tamar is immediately
followed by that of Joseph, when we are told "Pharaoh took off the ring
from his hand and put it upon Joseph's hand," when he inv