>>9805039>>9805043The rod and ring is a symbol found on ancient Sumerian engravings. There's lots of debate about what it means (and even if it is actually a rod and ring) but they seem to be a metaphor for a king's divine right to rule as it is often seen with depictions of gods and goddesses giving the rod-and-ring to a king.
From the Enuma Elish:
>They rejoiced, and they did homage unto him, saying, "Marduk is King! They bestowed upon him the scepter, and the throne, and the ring. They gave him an invincible weaponry which overwhelmeth the foe.By the way the rod and ring aren't two separate things, they could be one single entity (see pic related, she is holding them). The symbol is kinda like an Egyptian ankh.
The more boring explanation is that it could be some kind of device for measuring clothes sizes. From the Ishtar's Decent into the Underworld (one of the key Sumerian religious texts):
>She held the lapis-lazuli measuring rod and measuring line in her hand.However Ishtar is the Queen of the Gods and was the most worshipped so maybe her clothes measurer had some divine properties so it was still a symbol of divinity, I'm just guessing now though.
