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powerful.

Frontier his south [is] as far as Karei, [frontier]

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III. The arrival of the bride of Amenophis III. in Egypt from Mesopotamia, with three hundred and seventeen of her women; the text reads :— a

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Year tenth under the majesty of Horus, bull powerful, diademed

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majesty his, life, strength, health, the daughter of the prince of

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IV. The construction of the lake of Queen Thi in the eleventh year of the reign of Amenophis. The text of this scarab was first published in Rosellini, Monumenti Storici, tav. xliv. No. 2. It was partly translated by Rosellini, then by Hinks (in Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, vol. xxi. Dublin, 1848, Sec. "Polite Literature," On the age of the Eighteenth Dynasty of Manetho, p. 7), and by Birch, Records of the Past, Vol. XII. p. 41. The text printed below is corrected from Stern's copy in Aeg. Zeitschrift, 1887, p. 87, note 2. The scarab is dated in the first day, the third month of sowing 1

Hathor.

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of the eleventh year of Amenophis III.,

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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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suten hemt 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 Menȧ, 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.

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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 dating of who lived hundreds of years after they were first hewn out, scarabs 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.

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