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An examination of the nymph showed M. Fabre that the fore-limbs lack the tarsi which the remaining legs possess, and that the toothed limb ends bluntly, without any trace of a terminal appendage. In the others the tarsus is easily distinguishable. The sacred beetle is born maimed; his mutilation dates from the beginning. Further observation showed M. Fabre that the nymph occupied 28 days, as Horapollo said, in assuming his final shape as a beetle. Horapollo said that the creature obtained its release from its hard shell through the action of its mother, who threw it into water, whereby the shell became dissolved; but in this he was wrong. It is true that the shell was drenched with water, but the water that drenched it was the rain, which soaked through the earth into the hollow in which the " pear was hidden, and dissolved it. The young and perfect beetle made its way along the horizontal passage, and up through the shaft to the surface of the ground, where it at once began to collect food for itself and to fashion a dung ball after the manner of its forbears. With the above facts before us we can see now why Horapollo and other ancient writers made so many mistakes in describing the scarabaeus sacer. They mistook the ball of food for the "pear," of which they knew nothing, and therefore could not deduce the existence of the mother-beetle. Horapollo somehow knew that the beetle deposited only one egg in the ball (i.e., "pear") and therefore called that egg the "only-begotten"; but as a matter of fact the scarabaeus deposits a single egg in each of several balls (i.e., "pears ") in a season. The existence of the larva was wholly unknown to Horapollo, Aelian and Porphyry, and none of them realized that when two or more beetles were seen rolling along the food-ball each beetle was watching his opportunity to steal the ball for himself.

The reverence shown by the Egyptians to the scarab as an emblem of incarnation of the Creator of the universe was not shared by neighbouring nations. Thus Physiologus, after describing how scarabs roll up their eggs in balls of dung, and how they push them backwards and how the young, having come to life, feed upon the dung in which they are hatched, goes on to say that we may learn of a certainty that scarabs are heretics who are polluted by the filth of heresies; that these balls, which are formed of filth and nastiness, and which they roll backwards and not forwards, are the evil thoughts of their heresies, which are formed of wickedness and sin, and which they roll against mankind, until they become children of error, and by being participators in the filth of their heresies they become other beings like unto them (Land, Anecdota Syriaca, tom. IV, p. 77, cap. 56). And the ignorance of the habits and manner of life of the scarabaeus, which is displayed by certain Syrian writers of repute upon natural history, is astounding; here is a specimen: "The scarabaeus receives conception through its mouth, and when it comes to bring forth, it gives birth to its young through its ears. It has the habit of stealing,

and wherever it finds small things, and things of gold and silver, it takes them and hides them in its hole. And if it finds pulse in the house, it takes it and mixes it up with other things, and [it mixes] chick-peas with beans, and beans with lentils, and rice with millet and wheat, and everything which it finds it mixes together in the place where it hides itself. Thus it does the work of the cooks who mix such things together to make to stumble those who buy pulse at the shops. And if any man takes notice of it and smites it, it takes vengeance upon his clothing. If having collected pieces of money and taken them forth to the race-course to play with them, they be taken away from it, it wanders about, and turns hither and thither, and if it finds them not it straightway kills itself."1 And Bar-Hebraeus, commenting in

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ܫܕܪ ܥܠܝܗܘܢ ܚܠܘܛܐ lxxviii, 45, and referring to the words

or ano (Heb. ny, he sent among them the gad-fly, LXX, 'Eğaπéoteiλev eis avтoùs кvvóμviav), "he sent against them crowds of insects and they devoured them," includes the scarab (baka, plur. Laään; Kaâaw, plur. o) among noxious creatures like dog-flies, scorpions, ants, etc., . .

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The texts afford abundant proof that from the earliest times the scarabaeus sacer was associated in the minds of the Egyptians with the Sun-god, by whatever name he was called. It is clear that this association had a religious significance, and the name of the insect

or

in Egyptian, KHEPRERÁ, 8818, Cl, suggests what that significance was. The root of this name is kheper, 1,

or

or , meaning "to come into existence, to become,

to take birth, to spring into being," and the god of which this beetle was an incarnation was called KHEPERA,

8847, i.e., “the god who came into being

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himself]. This god is often depicted with a beetle on his head, or with a beetle, with or without outstretched wings, instead of a head. He came into being in primeval time when nothing but himself existed, and was self-produced and self-existent. By an effort of his will he created the sun, and heaven, and earth, and the gods, and men, and every animate creature, and everything inanimate. The

1 Ahrens, Das Buch der Naturgegenstände, text, p. 41, translation, p. 62.

creation of this universe began, it was thought, when the ball of the sun appeared above the horizon, and in one way or another all life sprang from and depended upon that ball. Primitive man in the Nile Valley marvelled at the sight of the solar ball mounting up in the sky and then rolling across it to the place where it rolled down below the horizon and disappeared. By some reasoning, to us inexplicable, he associated it with the balls of dung which he saw the dung-beetles rolling along the ground in the spring and summer. He knew that young beetles appeared on the earth, and he assumed that they came out of the balls which the full-grown beetles made, for he knew nothing about the grub and the larva of the beetle. Life came out of the ball of the beetle, and life came out of the solar ball in the sky, which was also rolled along, therefore the roller of the solar ball must be a beetle, and from first to last a god who had the form of a beetle was declared by the Egyptians to be the creator of the universe. Kheperȧ was a very ancient form of the Sun-god, whose cult at an early period extended from one end of the Nile Valley to the other, and it may well be the oldest of all the solar cults in Egypt. The use of the scarab as a religious amulet does not begin with the introduction of the worship of Ra into Egypt, as some have supposed, for the cult of the scarab is indigenous, being probably of Sûdânî origin, whilst that of the man-god Ra was brought from the East, and did not become predominant in Egypt until the IVth or Vth dynasty.

The Egyptian wore the scarab amulet at first with the idea of equipping himself with the power of the great Sky-beetle, and as a protection against evil, visible and invisible; and it gave him life and health and strength daily. Soon, however, he connected in his mind the daily course of the sun with the period of his own life, and the sunset with the death of his mortal body. But the sun derived power from the great Sky-beetle to rise again daily, and the Egyptian argued, "Why should not the beetle which I wear, if placed on my dead body, give it power to rise again?" In this way the ideas of resurrection and renewed life became associated with the beetle, and men began to attach scarabs to the dead, and to bury them in the tombs, with the view of preventing the death of the deceased from being eternal.

The Egyptians selected two kinds of beetles as originals for the copies or models of them which they made, namely, the scarabaeus sacer and the Goliathus Atlas. The former is the type of the thousands of scarabs that exist in our great collections, and the latter is that which is copied in the heart scarabs. A specimen of the Goliathus caught by Dr. Junker was 10 cm. (4 in.) long and 44 cm. (nearly 2 in.) wide. The wing-cases were brown, the thorax was black with white bands, and the sides of the abdomen and the legs were of a dark olive-green colour.1 Sir Harry Johnston says that the Ceratorrhina goliath was much used in native medicine and 1 Travels in Africa, Vol. II, P. 450.

sorcery.1 It appears early in August in large numbers, and disappears when the rains cease; it makes a ball as large as an apple.2

Livingstone, knowing nothing about the " pears" in which the mother-beetle deposits her eggs, says that whilst the larvae are growing they feed upon the balls of dung. He thought that the natives connected this beetle with ancestor worship because he saw a large beetle hung up before a figure in a spirit-house of a burnt and deserted village. The modern Sûdânî women eat beetles and say that they make them prolific, and the ancient Egyptians used the shell of a beetle mixed with oil, etc., as a medicine to assist a woman in labour to give birth to her child.5

Scarab amulets were made of almost every kind of material— wood, hard stone, steatite, ivory, glazed faïence or Egyptian porcelain, iron, etc.; they vary in length from half an inch to about two inches. The earliest scarabs made were used as amulets and nothing else, but when the Egyptians began to make them is not known. Many scarabs of undoubtedly ancient workmanship have been found bearing on their bases the name of Khufu (Kheops), Khāfrā (Khephren), Menkaura (Mycerinus), kings of the IVth dynasty and builders of pyramids, and of Unás, a king of the Vth or VIth dynasty. This fact has led many to assume that these scarabs were made under the Old Kingdom, but all the known facts go to show that all the scarabs bearing these names were made at a much later period. There is nothing surprising in this. The names of the great kings were regarded and used as "words of power" under the New Kingdom, and probably earlier, and the scarab-makers of the Saïte Period might well consider the names of the builders of the three great pyramids at Gîzah as eminently suitable for talismanic inscriptions. But why the name of Unȧs should have been considered to be a " word of power" is hard to understand. A few scarabs are known which seem 1 George Grenfell, in Bentley, Pioneering on the Congo, Vol. II, p. 944; and see Vol. I, p. 405.

2 Baker, Albert Nyanza, p. 240.

3 Travels, p. 24.

• Last Journals, Vol. II, p. 27.

5 Ebers Papyrus, Plate XCIV.

• Hall suggests (Catalogue, p. xii) that

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Un-nefer, a title of Osiris, but another explanation may be offered. When the Rev. J. Loftie was making his collection of scarabs (afterwards purchased by the British Museum) he lived for some winters at Gîzah and Cairo, with the view of collecting scarabs of every king of Egypt, including Menȧ or Menes! He employed several natives, both at Gîzah and Sakkarah, and to assist them he wrote the cartouches of the kings he wanted on slips of paper, which they carried about with them whilst searching. The scarabs which he failed to find one winter were often forthcoming the next, and as the names of the kings of the Old Kingdom are comparatively simple and easy to copy, it is probable that the expert forgers of "anticas "who then lived in Gîzah village helped him out of his difficulties. For years scarabs bearing the names of the three great pyramid builders were very common at Gîzah.

to belong to the period immediately following the VIth dynasty, but the use of the scarab did not become general until the XIth and XIIth dynasties. At this period names of kings were inscribed on the bases of scarabs as words of power," and the scarab was supposed to carry in itself both the life-giving power of Kheperȧ and the power of the king whose name was cut upon it. The best scarabs of this period are beautifully made, and the actual form of the scarabaeus sacer is copied with marvellous accuracy. Officials and men of high rank had their names cut upon their scarabs, which were then used as seals, and such scarabs were buried with their owners, presumably with the idea that in addition to their value to them as amulets, they would be useful to them in transacting business in the Other World. When the scarab was used merely as a seal by its owner it was carried on a string or wire attached to a ring of some kind, and not worn. Frequently it was mounted as the bezel in a ring of gold or silver-gold, which was worn on the finger like an ordinary ring. Under the XIIth dynasty a great development in the arts of the jeweller and the lapidary took place, at any rate in the north of Egypt, and the ornaments of the period, with their minute and accurate inlays of carnelian, mother-of-emerald, lapislazuli, etc., are very remarkable examples of skill, good taste and judgment; they were never equalled by the best handicraftsman of the XVIIIth dynasty at Thebes. Side by side with the scarab, the use of scaraboids and cowroids became common; both varieties were inscribed on their bases, the backs of the former being usually quite plain. But neither scaraboids nor cowroids were regarded as amulets, and they possessed no religious significance.

Under the XIIth dynasty the principal home of the jeweller and lapidary was Memphis, where no doubt the beautiful jewellery found at Dahshûr was made. A fine example of the gold-mounted scarabs of the period is exhibited in the British Museum (30711). As Memphis declined and Thebes grew in importance, the scarabs made by Theban craftsmen began to improve in workmanship, and they soon equalled those of Memphis in accuracy of form and beauty. The scarabs which the officials used as seals bore their owners' names and titles on their bases, but a great many scarabs were made in glazed faïence, and as the material of which they were made rendered them too fragile to be used as seals, it is clear that they were used as religious amulets only. The scarabs bearing the name of Thothmes III are remarkable for their number and treatment, and they proclaim the great importance that was attached to his name as a heka (" word of power "). Under the XIXth dynasty a space was left between the body of the scarab and the base, which was attached to it by the legs only. The scarab-makers of the XXVIth dynasty copied the style and treatment of the scarabs of the XIIth, XVIIIth and XIXth dynasties, and their work is unrivalled for its delicacy and "cleanness." Their workmanship in

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