3rd-4th century AD. A jasper gemstone for a pendant with text and decoration; obverse with intaglio scene depicting a standing figure (the god Abrasax?) wearing muscled armour with pendants (pteryges) and feathered headdress holding a spear and offering a thyrsus(?) to a seated robed female with a distaff in her lap, wheel beside her foot, field and border with pseudo-Greek text comprising mainly repeated lambda (?), mu (M), epsilon (?) and alpha (A); chamfered rim with repeated digamma (?, F) and other symbols; reverse with similar pseudo-Greek legend in nine transverse lines with border. See King, C.W., The Gnostics and their Remains, London, 1887; Bellermann, J.J., Versuch uber die Gemmen der Alten mit dem Abraxas-Bilde, Berlin, 1817-19; Betz, H.D., The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation, Including the Demotic Spells. Volume 1, University of Chicago Press, 1996.6.99 grams, 32mm (1 1/4"). Property of a London lady, part of her family's collection; acquired in the 1970s. A thyrsus was a fennel stalk covered with ivy, vines and leaves and topped with a pine cone. It was used in some ancient mystery religions as a sacred symbol. Gnosticism is a loose agglomeration of religious ideas and belief systems which originated in the first century AD in the eastern Mediterranean area, chiefly among Jewish sects including the followers of Christ. Aspects of many earlier religious traditions were combined to produce an intellectual environment in which direct knowledge of the divinity was considered achievable through study and esoteric insight.