Amulet Atlas

amuletsHeart scarab

said the Egyptian word for the heart is ib; the object is named for where it lies

also: heart scarab amulet · Chapter 30B scarab

amuletAncient EgyptEgypt

An oval beetle, larger and heavier than the scarabs of the living, cut from a dark green or black stone — green jasper, serpentine, basalt — and usually not drilled for suspension. New Kingdom examples run four to five centimetres long. The base carries Chapter 30B of the Book of the Dead, cut into the stone or onto a gold plate fixed to it. It is hung at the mummy's neck on gold wire, the stone held in a gold frame, and laid over the heart.

cited

When

c. 1690 BCE to the end of the Third Intermediate Period cited

PeriodSecond Intermediate Period to the Third Intermediate Period
How the date is knownexcavated — dug up in a dated context
Notefrom_year is the source's 'Sixteenth Dynasty or Seventeenth Dynasty circa 1690 B.C.' for the first known depictions; the source also says the amulet was in use as early as the Eleventh Dynasty, which is earlier and undated there. The end is the source's 'remained in use until the Third Intermediate Period'; the Late Period opens c. 664 BCE, so -663 is that boundary and is this project's arithmetic.

Years are stored astronomically — 1 CE is 1, 1 BCE is 0, 500 BCE is −499 — and printed the way a reader says them. How these dates are made.

The thing itself

FormPendant
Made ofGold
GoesOn the chest, under the shirt · At the neck · In the grave
Made bythe embalming trade and the workshops that supplied it
It saysChapter 30B of the Book of the Dead, naming the dead person and commanding the heart not to testify against them (Egyptian hieroglyphic)
Length50 mm
Colourdark green · black
Retiredyes — it is replaced rather than kept
NoteThe source publishes 4–5 cm for New Kingdom examples and 2–4 cm for the Third Intermediate Period variant; 50 mm is the top of the New Kingdom band. Green jasper, serpentine and basalt are named in the source and have no key in materials.json; the gold is the frame, the wire and the inscribed plate.

What its carriers say it stops

Reported, attributed, not tested here. Each row below is somebody's claim, with their name on it.

The story

The spell on the base is an instruction to an organ. At the Weighing of the Heart the dead person's heart goes on one pan of the scales and a single feather from Ma'at's headdress on the other. A heart lighter than the feather lets its owner start the journey to Aaru; a heart heavy with wrongdoing tips off the pan into the jaws of Ammit, and the soul is left restless in the Duat. Chapter 30B commands the heart not to give evidence against its owner. The scarab is there to hold it to that, or to speak in its place.

That is why the heart, alone among the organs, stayed in the body. Egyptians held it to be the seat of the mind, so the embalmers took out the other viscera and preserved them separately and left the heart where it was — with the stone beetle on top of it.

The first known depictions are Sixteenth or Seventeenth Dynasty, about 1690 BCE, though the amulet was in use as early as the Eleventh Dynasty. Until the Eighteenth Dynasty it stayed close to Theban royalty; then it turns up in other people's burials. In the Twenty-first Dynasty it is an important piece of protection among the priesthood of Amun. After that it thins out of human burials and attaches to particular gods instead.

The object shrank. New Kingdom heart scarabs are large, four to five centimetres. By the Third Intermediate Period a smaller variant appears, two to four centimetres — and because it is small it is left uninscribed. These small ones are not laid over the wrappings but put inside the chest cavity, next to the real heart. Inference — a spell-bearing amulet that stops bearing its spell is a change worth naming: the shape is doing the work the words used to do.

The Book of the Dead specifies a stone it calls nmhf, nemehef. Nobody has identified it.

cited

How it is made and carried

Cut from dark stone, inscribed on the base with Chapter 30B, set in a gold frame and hung at the neck on gold wire, or — in the smaller late form — put into the chest cavity beside the heart during mummification. Some were worked into pectorals, the rectangular chest ornaments laid on a mummy's breast.

cited

Now

Not made and not used; the practice ended with the religion that needed it. Heart scarabs sit in museum cases, and the Israel Museum and the British Museum both publish examples. As of 2026 what a reader is most likely to meet is a photograph of one, captioned with a spell about a heart being asked to keep quiet.

inference

Where you can see one

An accession number appears here only where it was read off a catalogue page that is linked. No link, no number.

Not to be confused with

What this is near

originScarabthe parent shape — the same beetle, worn by the living and used to stamp their letterskinWedjat eyeits partner in the wrappings: one speaks for the dead at the weighing, the other guards the cut the embalmer mademotifThe beetlethe sign it carries, read as the sun rolled up at daybreak and so as rebirthtraditionEgyptian amulet craftthe tradition that placed it, by the rules of a funeral rather than by a wearer's choicepracticeGrave depositthe practice this object exists inside; it was never meant to be seen againpracticeInscribingthe step that makes it work as a heart scarab rather than as a large beetle — and the step the late small ones droppersonE. A. Wallis Budgethe translator through whom most English readers first met Chapter 30BkinTyetanother amulet the wrappings required, placed on the upper torso rather than the heart

What names this one

Each in its own words, from its own page.

kinDjed pillarthe other amulet the wrappings required at the chest, aimed at a different organ and a different threatdescendantScarabthe funerary member of this family — same beetle, but sized to the chest, inscribed with a spell and told to keep quiet at the weighingkinTyetthe other amulet the wrappings required, one organ lower and with a spell cut on it rather than spoken over itkinWedjat eyeits partner in the wrappings — one guards the body's opening, the other speaks for the dead at the weighingcarriesEgyptian amulet craftthe piece it made to argue on a dead person's behalf at a trialcarried-byThe beetlethe large one laid at the heart, inscribed to keep the heart from speaking against its ownercarried-byGrave depositthe amulet with the strictest placement in this practice — over the heart, or later inside the chestcarriesThe Egyptian galleries, the Metropolitan Museum of Artthe large scarab laid on the chest of the dead, held in the same department

Where this came from

Elsewhere

Record updated 2026-09-16. This record as JSON. Every field carries its own provenance; the tier chips above say which.

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