Medium: Amethyst, copper. Dimensions: Diam. Accession Number: Timelines Egypt, B. Visiting The Met? Browse the Collection. Scarabs ca. Middle Kingdom. Public Domain. Open Access. Through modern cinema and film, Western society has come to perceive the Egyptian scarab as a destructive and evil entity, but the ancient Egyptian understanding of the beetle was very different. The Egyptians saw the Egyptian scarab Scarabaeus sacer as a symbol of renewal and rebirth.
The beetle was associated closely with the sun god because scarabs roll large balls of dung in which to lay their eggs, a behavior that the Egyptians thought resembled the progression of the sun through the sky from east to west.
The connection between the beetle and the sun was so close that the young sun god was thought to be reborn in the form of a winged scarab beetle every morning at sunrise. As this young sun god, known as Khepri, rose in the sky, he brought light and life to the land.
Scarab amulets were used for their magical rejuvenating properties by both the living and the dead. Scarabs were used by living individuals as seals from the start of the Middle Kingdom ca. These scarabs, like JHUAM and , had inscriptions on their flat bottoms and could be impressed into mud or clay. However, as on both of these objects, the incised design was often a schematic combination of hieroglyphs and geometric patterning.
Patterns could often denote the specific administrative office held by the wearer. This steatite amulet is a scarab.
It is bright turquoise in color with severe wear on its top, forming a thick brown strip lengthwise down its back. A soft stone called Steatite that hardened when fired called steatite. The most common scarabs were the hardstone made from amethyst, green jasper, and carnelian. The beetle symbol came in the shape of an amulet that existed throughout all the periods of ancient Egypt when it first appeared in the late Egypt old Kingdom BC as they evolved from what was known as button seals.
They were extremely rare but by the time of Egypt middle kingdom BC , there were created in great numbers where they were used as ornaments and an amulet especially in Egypt new kingdom BC as a large Scarab was placed in the bandages of mummies to represent the heart of the deceased. The symbol appeared many times in the holy book of the dead. The Scarab came in the shape of a seal and there were many clay sealings.
The Egyptian Scarab Beetle was used in describing the titles of officials, places, even different deities combined with a prayer like " With Ra Behind There Is Nothing To Fear" as a sign of a good omen. In the 11th dynasty, the most valuable class of scarabs were the ones that bear royal names.
Most of the names of the Hyksos dynasts have been known due to the recovered collections of Scarabs. The scarab was imported by ancient traders from the Mediterranean, Mesopotamia, Levant and the Middle East, even today the scarab still considered being a common product of present-day forgers.
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Male and female beetles will often roll away the dung ball together, dig a nice hole for it, drop it in, and cover it. Below ground, the female will rework the dung into the shape of a pear, leaving the top hollow, where she inserts her eggs. When the larvae hatch, they have more than enough to eat, eventually pupating before emerging into the light of day.
Dung beetles vary in the shape of their face shovels, which they use to slice off bits of crap. Ah, the glories of evolution.
This is especially true among the great herds of Africa, which drop a staggering amount of plops. Dung beetles are more than happy to pick up little bits and roll them around, distributing fertilizer more evenly among the plains. Burying the droppings also has the added benefit of removing a food supply for flies, helping to keep their populations in check.
Thus the humble dung beetle is entirely deserving of the worship it received from the ancient Egyptians. Even the Greeks put it on a throne, claiming it was the king of the mythical pygmies —a race of tiny peoples at constant war with cranes the birds, not the machinery —and went so far as to associate it with Zeus, according to Cambefort.
But the world would be a whole lot smellier without them. Reference: Cambefort, Y. Cultural Entomology Digest, Issue 1.
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