agate and crystal, etc., are a small but very interesting class; at times the device is purely Egyptian, and the inscriptions in Phoenician letters are the only additions by the Phoenicians. B.M. Nos. 1024 and 1036 are tolerably good examples of them. The former is inscribed on the base with three hawks with outspread wings, and two of them have disks on their heads; these, of course, represent the hawk of Horus. The Phoenician inscription gives the name Eliâm. The latter is inscribed with a beetle in a square frame, and on the right and left is an uraeus ; each end of the perpendicular sides of the frame terminates in † ankh, and above and below it is a figure of Rã, or Horus, hawk-headed, holding a sceptre. The name, inscribed in Phoenician characters, is "Mersekem." In 1891, while carrying on excavations at Dêr, a place about three and a half hours to the south-west of Baghdad, I obtained a steatite scarab inscribed with an uraeus , ankh, and an illegible sign, together with an oval green transparent Gnostic gem inscribed with the lion-headed serpent XNOYBIC. Both objects were probably brought from Lower Egypt.1

Dr. Birch describes in Nineveh and Babylon (London, 1853, pp. 281, 282) a series of eleven scarabs2 which Sir Henry Layard dug up at 'Arâbân, a mound situated on the western bank of the Khâbûr, about two and a half days' journey north of Dêr on the Euphrates, and about 10 miles east of the 'Abd al-'Azîz hills. With one exception they are all made of steatite, glazed yellow or green or blue. Two of them are inscribed with the prenomen of Thothmes III; one bears the prenomen of Amenophis III, with the titles "beautiful god, lord of two lands, crowned in every land"; one is inscribed men Kheperȧ at Åmen, “established

of Kheperà, emanation of Amen"; two are inscribed

and

, and belong to the same period; one is inscribed with a hawk-headed lion and a hawk; one bears the legend, "beautiful lord, lord of two lands," i.e., the North and South; one is inscribed with a human-headed beetle, with outstretched wings, in the field

are uraei and†† of beautiful workmanship; and one is inscribed

with

and an uraeus

having f

on its head. The scarab in haematite is inscribed with the figure of a king seated on a throne,

and a man standing before him in adoration; between them is f

1 The numbers are G. 475 and 24314.

2 Another scarab from 'Arâbân was presented to the British Museum by Mrs. Garratt in 1917. It was given by Layard to Miss de Salis, and on its base is cut a figure of Anubis or Set.

With the exception of this last scarab, it is pretty certain that all belong to the period of the XVIIIth dynasty, for they have all the appearance of such antiquity, and they possess all the delicacy of workmanship found upon scarabs of this time. The design on the haematite scarab appears to be a copy from an Egyptian scarab executed by a foreign workman, but it may be that the hardness of the material made the task of engraving so difficult that the character of the design was altered in consequence. The presence of these scarabs at 'Arâbân is not difficult to account for. Thothmes I, one of the early kings of the XVIIIth dynasty, carried his victorious arms into Mesopotamia, and set up a tablet to mark the boundary of the Egyptian territory at a place called Nî, on the Euphrates, and the authority of the Egyptians in that land was so great that when Thothmes III arrived there several years after he found the tablet still standing. The kings who immediately succeeded Thothmes III marched into this land, and that their followers should take up quarters on the fertile banks of the Khâbûr, and leave behind them scarabs and other relics, is not to be wondered at. The antiquities found at ‘Arâbân are of a very miscellaneous character, and, among other things, include an Assyrian colossus inscribed Palace of Meshezib-Marduk the king" (B.C. 700), and a Chinese glass bottle inscribed with a verse of the Chinese poet KEIN-TAU, A.D. 827-831; it is possible that the scarabs described above may have been brought there at a period subsequent to the XVIIIth dynasty, but, in any case, they themselves belong to this period.

Etruscan scarabs. Gems engraved in the form of beetles or scarabs had their origin in Egypt. Thence the scarab found its way into Greece and Etruria, partly through the commerce of the Phoenicians, and partly under the influence of Greek residents in Egypt during the VIth century B.C., or nearly so. The Greeks cared little for the scarab, but the Etruscans admired them greatly, and their lapidaries made them in large numbers for their fellow-countrymen. The Etruscans owed the subjects which they engraved on their scarabs to the Greeks, and these are taken from the legends of Greek heroes, and very rarely from myths of the gods. The figures are represented in profile and constantly engaged in action; and the workmanship is laboriously minute. The beginning of scarabengraving in Etruria was assigned by Murray to the end of the VIth century and the beginning of the Vth century B.C. The inscriptions are in Etruscan, but the Greek names inscribed on scarabs have been modified in the spelling to suit Etruscan habits, and not seldom they are wrongly applied. Inscriptions are more frequent in the later period of engraving than in the earlier. The elaborate gold mounts, and the absence of mountings specially adapted for sealing, suggest that the Etruscans did not generally use their scarabs as seals. Necklaces of scarabs have been found, and the well-known taste of the Etruscans for jewellery worn on the person suggests

that they wore their scarabs mounted on bracelets, like the Greek scaraboids, or set as bezels in their finger rings. On the sources of the designs on Etruscan scarabs see Murray's "Introduction," pp. 22, 23, and for details of the scarabs from Ialysos, Kamiros, Tharros and Etruria see Mr. A. H. Smith's description in his Catalogue of Engraved Gems, London, 1888.

The Gnostics inscribed the scarab on the gems worn by them, and partly adopted the views concerning it held by the Egyptians. On an oval slab of green granite, in the British Museum, is inscribed a scarab encircled by a serpent having his tail in his mouth. The same design is found on another oval, but the beetle has a human head and arms; above the head are rays, and above that the legend EIAAMY; to the right is a star, to the left are a star and crescent, and beneath the hind legs three stars.

3

The first published classification of scarabs was made by the late Dr. Birch in his Catalogue of the Collection of Egyptian Antiquities at Alnwick Castle (printed by the Duke of Northumberland for private circulation, London, 1880), pp. 103-167, 236-242, in which he described 565 scarabs. The arrangement he followed was: (1) Names of gods and emblems; (2) historical inscriptions, names of kings and historical representations; (3) names of officers. Catalogues of public collections of scarabs have been published by myself1 and by Newberry,2 and catalogues of private collections by Loftie,3 Petrie, Frazer, 5 Ward and myself." And a miscellaneous collection of seal-cylinders has been published by Newberry, with descriptions and a "scientific" introduction. But for a comprehensive treatment of scarabs as a whole the student must rely solely upon the Catalogue of Egyptian Scarabs, etc., in the British Museum, the first volume of which has been published by the Trustees of that Institution. This volume, the work of Dr. H. R. Hall, deals with Royal Scarabs (ie., scarabs with royal names on them). In it, after a description of the proper use of the scarab as a religious amulet, the scarab is treated as a seal, and its correct place assigned to it in the series of objects which the Egyptians used as seals, viz., cylinder-seals, button-seals (imported from abroad), scaraboids, cowries and plaques. The volume contains full descriptions of 2,891 scarabs, seal-cylinders, seal-amulets, etc., and is illustrated by 1,518 full-sized photographic reproductions and line drawings,

1 Budge, Catalogue of Egyptian Antiquities in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, pp. 87 ff.; and Catalogue of the Egyptian Antiquities in the Harrow School Museum, p. 14 ff.

2 Scarab-shaped Seals in the Cairo Museum, London, 1907.

3 Essay on Scarabs, London (no date).

4 Historical Scarabs, London, 1889.

Catalogue of Scarabs, London, 1900.

The Sacred Beetle, London, 1902.

"Hilton Price Collection, p. 17 ff.; and Lady Meux Collection, p. 185 ff. Scarabs, London, 1908.

which are distributed throughout the book. The inscriptions are often reproduced, with translations, in hieroglyphic type. Here, for the first time, the student has a mass of material for study not found elsewhere, and the photographic reproductions are infinitely superior to and more accurate than the published hand-made copies of the designs and inscriptions on the bases of scarabs. In many instances the hand-copies give a totally false impression of the appearance of the scarab, and when, as in many cases, the copyist has not been able to read the inscription, his copies have destroyed the chance of anyone else doing so without consulting the originals.

THE SCARAB OF THE HEART

FROM first to last in the Dynastic Period the Egyptians attached great importance to the preservation of the heart of a man, and the help of the priest and the magician was invoked to prevent any evil befalling it. It was taken from the body and mummified, and placed in one of the so-called “Canopic " jars, and a scarab, usually made of a greenish or black stone, was inserted in the body to take its place; hence the name "heart scarab." On this scarab was cut, in hieroglyphs, a prayer which the deceased was to recite when his heart was weighed in the Hall of the Two Maāti goddesses in the presence of Osiris, and which was held to possess very special importance. The Theban Recension of the Book of the Dead contains several spells that were written with the view of giving a heart to the deceased and of effecting its preservation, viz., Chapter XXVI— the Chapter of giving a heart, to the Osiris (i.e., the deceased). Chapters XXVII and XXVIII—the Chapters of not letting the heart (or, breast) of a man be carried away from him in the Khert-neter (the underworld). Chapter XXIX-the Chapter of not letting the heart,, of a man be plucked away from him in the Khert-neter (a variant of this Chapter in the Papyrus of Ani speaks of a heart of seher-t stone,

L

Chapter XXX-the

, of a man be driven away

from him in the Khert-neter. Chapter XXVI is also known as

Chapter of the heart of lapis-lazuli"); Chapter

XXVII as " Chapter of the heart of neshem-t stone,'

Chapter XXIXB as " Chapter of the heart of seher-t stone,'

Chapter XXX exists in two versions, A and B, and the latter is

T

known as "Chapter of the heart of green basalt " (or, green jasper). Of all the Chapters the most important was Chapter XXXв, which is found in all the great Codices of the Book of the Dead that were written early in the XVIIIth dynasty. But the Chapter belongs to a much earlier period, for it was known and copied upon coffins that were made under the XIth and XIIth dynasties,1 and the Rubrics of the LXIVth Chapter of the Book of the Dead show that ancient Egyptian traditions assigned it alternatively to the Ist and IVth dynasties. The Papyrus of Nu mentions both traditions. According to the first (see sheet 13) the Chapter was found inscribed on a foundation-stone in the shrine of Hennu during the reign of Ḥesepti, a king of the Ist dynasty. And

i.e., Semti,

according to the second "it was found in Khemenu (Hermopolis) upon a slab of alabaster (?) of the South, and was cut in real lapislazuli under the feet of the god [Thoth] in the time of His Majesty, the King of the South and North Menkaurā, by prince Herṭaṭaf,'

Several papyri ascribe the "finding" of the Chapter to the reign of Menkaura (Mycerinus), and make Hermopolis, the city of the Eight Gods of the Cycle of Thoth, its place of origin. The text of it, as given in the Papyrus of Nu, reads :

Stand not up against me at my testifying. Tender

no evidence

1 See Aeg. Zeitschrift, 1866, p. 55 (Goodwin, "On a Text of the Book of the Dead belonging to the Old Kingdom ").