An exchange of love.

The History of the Wedding Ring – A Recognizable Symbol of Love

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.

-Matt Jacks