Solomon and Ashmedai: The Ring Given Away
In a Talmudic story, Solomon releases the restraints on Ashmedai and hands over his ring. The demon's answer strips the king of power and turns royal certainty into wandering and fear.
The account
Solomon has kept Ashmedai under restraint while the Temple is built. Then the king asks what makes demons greater than human beings. In the account in Gittin, Ashmedai asks for the chain to be removed and the ring bearing God's name to be handed over. Solomon agrees. Ashmedai swallows the ring, expands to a terrifying size and casts the king far away. The man who commanded him must now struggle to make others recognize who he is.
Following the trail
This narrative appears in Gittin 68a–68b of the Babylonian Talmud, a rabbinic collection that Sefaria dates approximately to 450–550 CE. It belongs to a layered religious and literary discussion written down long after Solomon's traditional lifetime. The divine name on the ring and chain matters within this particular account; it should not automatically be replaced with the six-pointed design familiar from later images. The source documents the story, not the recovery of a historical enchanted ring.
Why it stays with us
The reversal begins with a voluntary gesture. No army overcomes the king: he yields the objects that contain another being's strength. Read as a narrative, the episode probes the limits of wisdom and possession. Even restored authority cannot simply erase the memory of being powerless before something the king believed he controlled.