Please see an important update down below regarding April Fools speculation. Thanks.

Was Lord of the Rings author J.R.R. Tolkien inspired by a real-life (and, according to ancient legend, cursed) golden Roman ring when he created the One Ring for his stories? Possibly.

A 12g gold ring (bearing the Latin inscription "Senicianus live well in God") went on exhibit this month at The Vyne in England. "The ring was probably found in 1785 by a farmer ploughing a few miles away within the walls of Silchester, one of the most enigmatic Roman sites in the country – a town which flourished before the Roman invasion, was abandoned by the 7th century and was never reoccupied," recounts The Guardian (via io9 ).

A tablet found at a site in Gloucestershire known locally as Dwarf's Hill bore an inscription that revealed that a curse had been placed on the golden ring. Said The Guardian: "A Roman called Silvianus informs the god Nodens that his ring has been stolen. He knows the villain responsible, and he wants the god to sort them out: 'Among those who bear the name of Senicianus to none grant health until he bring back the ring to the temple of Nodens.'"So how does Tolkien come into play? Archaeologist Sir Mortimer Wheeler re-excavated Dwarf's Hill and in 1929 called upon a professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford to help him with information on the deity Nodens. And that Oxford professor? None other than J.R.R. Tolkien, who just a few years later would pen The Hobbit, which introduced the world to the One Ring.