The Mummy

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рад The wooden heart scarab B.M. 24752 is of interest, for

the inscription on the base is of an unusual character. It reads: "The king gives an offering. May Osiris give sepulchral meals, oxen, geese, and things of all kinds pure and good to the Osiris, the lady of the house, the singing woman of Amen, Ruru-Uas."

In some cases a heart of green stone or glazed porcelain was made to serve as the heart scarab.

which was made for Pa-ser

Thus the green-stone heart

(B.M. 29439) is set in a gold

frame, with gold bands across the back to represent the folding of the beetle's wings, and on the base of it is cut the greater part of Chapter XXXв. Another good example is the hard crystalline green-stone heart B.M. 15619, which was made for the royal scribe, Nekht-Amen, scribe of the divine offerings of all the gods,

glazed porcelain and stone are B.M. 29440 and 8805. The former is a heart coloured cobalt on one side and green on the other. The upper part is shaped to represent a woman's wig, and in the hollow, in red porcelain, is a woman's face. Below the face, in yellow colour, is the Benu Bird, i.e., the soul of Rā. On the base, written in black on a green ground, are the opening words of Chapter XXXв. The latter (B.M. 8805) is made of stone, the upper part of which, when complete, was in the form of the head of a woman wearing a wig and necklace. Below the face was inlaid in blue and red porcelain the figure of a man-headed hawk,, i.e., the Ba, or soul of the deceased. A portion of this interesting object, unfortunately, is wanting.

In the late period the base of the heart scarab was flattened out, and ultimately became a pylon-shaped pectoral, as in B.M. 7858.

On the base the shape of the beetle is outlined with ††

above it, and (the horizon) below it. In the three lines of hieroglyphs enclosing the oval we have the name of the deceased, the scribe Piaai,, and the prayer, “May thy soul rest in Khert-neter, O scribe of the divine books. May thy soul appear as a living being."

mentioned in the top line was probably one of the late Pharaohs. A still later example is B.M. 24767. Here on the one side, cut in relief, we have the beetle in a boat with Isis on one side and Nephthys on the other. Above is the Tet, and below, in relief, are two jackals, probably intended for Anubis and Up-uatu. On the flat side, or base, is cut a part of Chapter XXXB, and the last line says that this 18 ', was written for Ḥer-Nekht, an ww 1

Chapter of the heart,'

overseer of the peasants (or, corvée ?)

There are a few mistakes in the text, but the general sense is clear. A tradition was current among the old men of Luxor and Kûrnah in 1886–90, that, in the first half of the XIXth century, when so many heart scarabs were found in the tombs, the bases of many of them were covered with plates of gold, on which lines of hieroglyphs were cut or stamped. In such cases the base of the scarab itself was uninscribed. I have been shown many heart scarabs with gold coverings having lines of hieroglyphs stamped on them, but there is reason to believe that the plates of gold were made by a Coptic goldsmith at Luxor, and that the inscriptions were stamped upon them by a friend and partner of his who lived at Karnak. An example of this kind of work was presented to the British Museum by Mr. Somers Clarke, F.S.A., and is exhibited in the Fourth Egyptian Room (26978). The native at Karnak possessed great skill in the making of "anticas," and the scarabs that he made deceived sometimes both the ordinary tourist and the archaeologist. His models were genuine XVIIIth dynasty scarabs, which he had obtained from Wilkinson, and he obtained the steatite from the hills whence his ancestors obtained theirs 3,000 years before. In glazing his scarabs he used the blue and green glaze which he chipped off from fragments of glazed pottery and melted in a rude furnace; but his glazing was uneven, and no one was more conscious of its defect than he was. Through the good offices of a well-known English collector he obtained from England a small portable furnace, with crucibles, etc., and his glazing improved wonderfully. His friends among the dragomans in Luxor told him when scarabs bearing the cartouches of Thothmes III or Rameses II were in demand, and he took care to provide a supply. Through a friend he obtained from an amiable English professor a list of the cartouches of all the kings. of the XVIIIth and XIXth dynasties, and then he made it easy for a collector to complete his series of scarabs of these kings without delay. Finding that heart scarabs were in demand he set to work and made several, but his ignorance of the correct forms of the hieroglyphs caused him, when cutting the Chapter of the Heart, to make mistakes that were recognizable as such by beginners in the study

The

of Egyptian Archaeology, and he abandoned that class of work. He then made a series of large steatite scarabs, on the bases of which he cut the figures of all the kings of the XVIIIth and XIXth dynasties, and their prenomens in cartouches, and sometimes their titles"Beautiful god," "Lord of the Two Lands," etc. He mounted each scarab in a gold setting, and covered the base with gold leaf, and then fastened it to a chain made of gold of a low quality or to a bronze collar. Some of them he sold very successfully to collectors, but before he could dispose of them all he died, and his family asked me to come and see the "anticas" which he had left behind and help them to dispose of them. On examining the collection I found several heart scarabs of the kind described above, and duplicates of two scarabs which had been bought by the British Museum and by the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, some years before. Maspero was with me when I examined the collection, and he thought the objects such good examples of native forgeries that he purchased them en bloc on behalf of the Egyptian Government, and took them with him on his dahabiyyah when he returned to Cairo. specimen purchased by the British Museum may be thus described. Green-glazed steatite scarab, measuring 3 inches by 1 inches by 1 inches, set in a metal frame inch wide, with a band across the back and another down the body over the place where the wings meet when folded. On the gilded base is cut the figure of a king wearing the crown a collar or necklace, and a loincloth, with projecting linen attachment. The king is kneeling, and holds in his right hand the whip, and in the left an offering (sic), or perhaps a censer. In front of him is a sitting lion, and behind him is a hawk, with the solar disk on his head. In the field are the prenomen of Thothmes III, the title (?)), and some garbled hieroglyphs. The scarab has on it pieces of linen, which are intended to suggest that it was taken out from among the bandages of the mummy of Thothmes III. It was fastened by a loop in the setting to a piece of gold chain about 10 inches long, which was in turn fastened to a large hoop of perfectly genuine bronze. The number of this forgery is 18190.

, and the sign (part of

HISTORICAL SCARABS

THE principal Historical Scarabs belong to the reigns of Amenḥetep III and his son Amenḥetep IV, and all of them were made and issued to commemorate events in their reigns which these kings considered to be of great importance. The beetle that was taken as the model for them was not the scarabaeus sacer, but the Goliathus, large specimens of which attain a length of nearly 5 inches. As a preface to

these scarabs mention must be made of the large scarabs which some think were issued by Amenḥetep III to commemorate his marriage with Tî. The fine specimen in the British Museum (Hall, Catalogue, No. 1724) is made of green-glazed steatite and is 3 inches in length. The text reads:

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1. Neter nefer neb åri khet Neb-Maat

God beneficent, lord maker of things, Neb-MaatRa, Amen-Rā meri 2. sa Ră

meri-f

Rā, of Amen-Rā beloved, son of Ra whom he loves,

Amenḥetep heq

Vast [ankh] må Rã hru

Amenḥetep, governor of Thebes, living like Rā day

Brit. Mus. 4004.

the living one.

The size and beauty of the scarab suggest that it had some special significance, but, as is the case with the scarab that records the names of the father and mother of Tî, no regnal year of the king is mentioned, and it is therefore impossible to say when it was issued.

I. THE WILD-CATTLE HUNT BY AMENHETEP III IN THE IIND YEAR OF HIS REIGN.-The scarab from which the text is taken was formerly in the MacGregor Collection at Tamworth, and is now in the British Museum (No. 55585). Photographs of it have been published by Fraser (Catalogue, frontispiece) and Budge (Tutankhamen, pl. VI), and a drawing by Newberry (Scarabs, pl. XXXII); translations have been made by Fraser and Newberry. The text reads :