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of the cleventh year of Amenophis III., S

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The first few lines of the inscription containing the king's titles are the same as the beginning lines of the scarabs of the series. The making of the tank is described as follows:

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Historical scarabs of Ameno

ḥemt phis III. Ordered majesty his the making of a lake for the royal spouse,

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tions on

Of the inscriptions found on scarabs by far the greater Inscripnumber consists of the names of kings. Names of priests scarabs. and ladies who took part in the services connected with the

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Publication of Catalogue

by Birch.

Loftie's

Essay.

various gods are common enough; so also are those of the singers of Amen-Ra. Scarabs inscribed with the names of kings are important historically, because sometimes they form nearly the only memorials of kings and royal personages, and they fill up gaps in the lists of kings of Egypt of whom, otherwise, nothing would be known. The names of the kings most commonly found are Thothies III., Amenophis III. and Rameses II., and of these that of Thothmes III. is the commonest. The use of the scarab by the Egyptians to denote the idea of resurrection is probably as old as their settlement in the Nile Valley, and scarabs are found inscribed with the names of nearly every king of every dynasty, beginning with that of Mena, the first king of the first dynasty, and ending with that of the Roman Emperor Antoninus.

The first published classification of scarabs was made by the late Dr. Birch in his Catalogue of the collection of Egyptian of Scarabs Antiquities at Alnwick Castle, pp. 103-167, 236-242, in which he described 565 objects of this class. The arrangement he followed in this subdivision was:-1. Names of mythological personages and emblems. 2. Historical inscriptions, names of kings, and historical representations. 3. Titles of officers. In 1884, the Rev. W. J. Loftie published his Essay of Scarabs, which contained a description of his collection of 192 scarabs, inscribed with royal names, and excellent drawings of each. His collection, like those of the Museum of the Louvre and the British Museum, was arranged chronologically; the principle of the arrangement he explained in his interesting preface. In my Catalogue of the Egyptian Collection of the Harrow School Museum, pp. 14–29, I gave a description of nearly one hundred and fifty scarabs, and translations of most of the inscriptions. In 1888 a catalogue of the scarabs and scaraboids from Egypt, Kamiros, and

Murray

and Smith.

3

1 Printed by the Duke of Northumberland for private distribution, London, 1880.

2 London, small 4to., no date.

3 Purchased by the Trustees of the British Museum in 1890.

4 Loftie, op. cit., p. xxxi.

5 Harrow, 1887.

Tharros was published by Dr. A. S. Murray and Mr. Hamilton Smith, in their Catalogue of Gems, pp. 46–58. In 1889 Mr. Flinders Petrie published a collection of drawings of 2,363 scarabs, with a few pages of introduction. The idea of this work was excellent, but the plates should have contained a tolerably complete set of examples of scarabs, carefully indexed. The title Historical Scarabs was a misnomer, for the only, strictly speaking, historical scarabs known, the series of the four of Amenophis III., were omitted.

tence of

upon

Scarabs inscribed with certain kings' names were made Persisand worn as much as a thousand years after the death of the certain kings whose names they bear. This fact is indisputable, names and if any proof were required it is furnished by the scarabs scarabs. dug up at Naucratis by Mr. Petrie. From the scarab-moulds found there, and the material from which they are made, and from the design and workmanship, it is clear that the scarabs of Naucratis are not older than the VIIth century B.C.; yet many of them bear the prenomens of Thothmes III., Seti I. and Rameses II., etc. As the paste of which these are made is identical with that of scarabs bearing the names of kings of the XXVIth dynasty, there is no possible doubt about this fact. Scarabs inscribed with the names of two kings Double furnish another proof. Thus in the British Museum, Nos. 4033 and 4035 bear the names of Thothmes III. and Seti I.; No. 16,580 bears the names of Thothmes I., Thothmes III., and Seti I.; No. 17,126 (a plaque) bears the names of Thothmes III. and Rameses II.; No. 17,138 bears the names of Thothmes III. and Rameses III.; No. 16,837 bears the names of Thothmes III. and Rameses IX.; and No. 16,796 bears the names of Thothmes III. and Psammetichus. That scarabs of a late period are found in tombs of the VIth, XIIth and XVIIIth dynasties is not to be wondered at, for tombs were used over and over again for burial by families Exact who lived hundreds of years after they were first hewn out, scarabs dating of and who had no connexion whatever with the people who impos

1 Historical Scarabs; A series of Drawings from the Principal Collections. Arranged Chronologically. London, 1889.

2 Naucratis, London, 1886, Plate XXXVII., No. 63, etc., Pl. XXXVIII., No. 182.

names.

sible.

Chronological

arrangement of

names

possible.

Scarabs

and Tharros.

were first buried in them. When a scarab is found bound up in a mummy, the date of which can be ascertained from the inscriptions upon it, that scarab can be used with advantage as an authority by which to compare other scarabs; when, however, a scarab is dug up with a lot of miscellaneous stuff it is of little value for the purpose of comparison. From the lowest depths of the VIth and XIIth dynasty tombs at Aswân, scarabs have been dug up which could not have been a day older than the XXVIth dynasty, if as old. In some of these tombs, carefully closed with beautifully fitting blocks of stone, were found also red terra-cotta jars inscribed in hieratic which could not have been a day older than the XIXth dynasty, yet the inscriptions on the walls proved beyond a doubt that the tombs were made for officials who lived during the XIIth dynasty. It must then be clearly understood that the objects found in a tomb do not, necessarily, belong to the period of the tomb itself, and all the evidence known points to the fact that it is nearly impossible to arrange a collection of scarabs chronologically, except so far as the order of the names is concerned. Comparatively little is known about the various local manufactures of scarabs, or of their characteristics, and hundreds of examples of them exist which can neither be read nor explained nor understood.

What has been said of the scarabs of Naucratis applies of Ialysos, Kamiros, equally to those found at Ialysos and Kamiros in Rhodes, and at Tharros in Sardinia, places associated with the Phoenicians or Carthaginians. At Ialysos, faïence and steatite scarabs are rare. Of the three found there preserved in the British Museum, two are steatite and one is of faïence. One of the examples in steatite is fractured, whereby the design or inscription is rendered illegible, and the other is inscribed with tet, emblem of stability, on each side of which is an uræus The example in faïence measures 1inch in length, and is inscribed with the prenomen of Amen-ḥetep III., ©* Scarabs are rare in Kamiros

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1 Such a scarab, however, may quite well be older than the mummy upon which it is found.

2 Brit. Mus. Reg. Nos. 72-3-15, 110; 70-10-3, 130 and 131.

also, so far as concerns the tombs, and in those in which black and red vases were obtained no scarabs were found; many specimens were, however, found in a well on the Acropolis, and among them were some inscribed with the prenomen of Thothmes III., having all the characteristics of those of the XXVIth dynasty found at Naucratis. The scarabs found at Tharros do not go farther back than the period of Carthaginian supremacy, that is, not farther than the middle of the VIth century B.C. A steatite scarab, found at anch “life,” and a winged

Thebes in Boeotia, inscribed with

gryphon wearing the crowns of Upper and Lower Egypt , belongs to the same period.

sion of

Nineveh.

At Kouyunjik there were found two pieces of clay, of Impresthe same colour and substance as that employed by Assur- scarabs banipal for the tablets of his library, bearing impres- found at sions of an Egyptian king slaughtering his enemies, and hieroglyphic inscriptions, probably from a scarab. The king holds a club or weapon in his raised left hand, and his right holds some instrument which rests on the heads of a

number of captives. The inscriptions read (AU)

neter nefer Shabaka neb ȧri xet, "Beautiful god, Shabaka, the lord, maker of things" (the first king of the XXVth dynasty, about B.C. 700). Behind the king

are the signs of sa “protection," anch "life," and I ha

"increase [of power]." In front of the king is the speech of some god

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ṭā-na nek set nebu, "I give to

thee all foreign lands." The Brit. Mus. Registration Nos. of these interesting objects are 51-9-2, 43, and 81-2-4, 352; as there is on the former also the impression of the seal of an Assyrian king, it has been thought that the impression

5

No. 132 in Table-Case E in the Kouyunjik Gallery.

2 Murray, Catalogue of Gems, p. 13.

3 Brit. Mus. Reg. Nos. 64-10-7, 895, 915, 1998.

↑ Murray, op. cit., p. 13, and King, Antique Gems and Rings, Vol. I. p. 124.

5 See Layard, Nineveh and Babylon, London, 1867, pp. 173, 174.

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