The Egyptian scarab: the amulet of the reborn sun

Few animals have played a symbolic role as important as that of the dung beetle in ancient Egypt. Watching this small beetle push a ball of dung along the ground, the Egyptians saw in it an image of the sun crossing the sky and being reborn every morning. The scarab thus became one of the most widespread amulets of the ancient world, produced in enormous numbers and worn by pharaohs, officials and ordinary people alike.

Khepri, the morning sun

In Egyptian the scarab was called kheper, a word linked to the verb meaning “to come into being” or “to transform”. From this came the name of Khepri, the god of the rising sun, depicted as a scarab or as a man with a scarab in place of his head. Just as the insect pushes its ball, so Khepri was thought to push the solar disc above the horizon at dawn, renewing the creation of the world each day.

The Egyptians had also noticed that new beetles emerged from the balls of dung in which the female lays her eggs. To an ancient observer it seemed that the insect was born of itself, with no need of parents. This apparent self-generation strengthened the scarab's link with the idea of rebirth and of life beyond death, central themes in Egyptian religion.

Seals, jewels and heart scarabs

Scarab-shaped amulets spread above all from the Middle Kingdom, at the beginning of the second millennium BC. They were made of glazed steatite, faience, hardstones and precious metals. The flat underside was often engraved with names, titles, decorative motifs or good-luck formulas, and many scarabs also served as seals for closing documents and containers. They were worn as rings or pendants, or threaded into necklaces and bracelets.

A special type was the heart scarab, placed on the chest of the mummy. It was inscribed with a chapter of the Book of the Dead, chapter thirty, in which the deceased asked his own heart not to testify against him at the judgement before Osiris. In the reign of Amenhotep III, in the fourteenth century BC, large commemorative scarabs were also produced to celebrate events of the reign, such as his marriage to Queen Tiye and the royal lion hunts.

The scarab in the Mediterranean

The scarab's success went beyond the borders of Egypt. Phoenicians and Carthaginians produced their own versions and spread them through their trade along the shores of the Mediterranean, from Sardinia to Spain. The Etruscans, between the sixth and fourth centuries BC, made scarabs of carnelian and agate engraved with scenes from Greek mythology, considered among the masterpieces of ancient gem carving, and many of them are now kept in Italian and foreign museums.

Over the centuries the scarab has kept its fascination intact, right up to the Egyptian-revival fashion of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, fuelled by great archaeological discoveries such as that of Tutankhamun's tomb in 1922. Behind the jewel lies the insight of the ancient observers of the Nile: in a small insect toiling in the dust one could recognise the movement of the sun and the promise of a new beginning.