By far the most important amulet in
ancient
Egypt was the scarab, symbolically as
sacred
to the Egyptians as the cross is to
Christians.
Based upon the dung beetle, this sacred
creature forms a ball of dung around its
semen
and rolls it in a large ball over the
sand
dropping it into its burrow. The female
lays her
eggs on the ground and covers them with
the
excrement ball that is consumed by the
larvae
that emerge in the following days as if
miraculously reborn. In the life cycle
of the
beetle, the Ancient Egyptians envisioned
a
microcosm of the daily rebirth of the
sun. They
imagined the ancient sun god Khepri was
a
great scarab beetle rolling the sun
across the
heavens. The scarab also became a symbol
of
the enduring human soul as well, hence
its
frequent appearance in funerary art.
Scarabs
of various materials form an important
class of
Egyptian antiquities. Though they first
appeared in the late Old Kingdom
(roughly
2575–2130 B.C.), scarabs remained rare
until
Middle Kingdom times (circa 1938-1600
B.C.)
when they were fashioned in great
numbers.
While some were used as ornaments,
others
were purely amuletic in purpose. The
seal type
of scarab was, however, the most common,
and many clay seals have been found
attesting to this use.
- (CK.0236)
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