{
 "schema": 1,
 "id": "scarab",
 "type": "amulet",
 "names": {
  "name": "Scarab",
  "native": "𓆣",
  "script": "Egyptian hieroglyphic",
  "lang": "egy",
  "said": "SKARR-ab, from Latin scarabaeus, a beetle",
  "aliases": [
   "scarab seal",
   "scarabaeus",
   "dung-beetle amulet",
   "royal-name scarab"
  ]
 },
 "etymology": {
  "root": "Latin scarabaeus 'beetle' — the museum's word, not Egypt's. The beetle the shape copies is usually identified as Scarabaeus sacer, and the god it stands for is Khepri.",
  "note": "Egyptologists read the shape as a rebus: the beetle rolling its ball of dung stands for the sun rolled across the sky at daybreak, and so for rebirth.",
  "tier": "cited",
  "source": "s:wp-scarab-artifact"
 },
 "region": [
  "ancient-egypt",
  "levant",
  "rome-italy",
  "iberia",
  "maghreb"
 ],
 "countries": [
  "EG",
  "IL",
  "PS",
  "SY",
  "LB",
  "TN",
  "IT",
  "ES",
  "TR"
 ],
 "facets": {
  "era": "ancient",
  "status": "archaeological",
  "portable": "worn",
  "restricted": "open",
  "hemisphere": [
   "N",
   "E"
  ]
 },
 "text": {
  "what": "A beetle, carved or moulded, with a flat underside cut as a seal. The back shows the head, the wing case and the legs; the base carries hieroglyphs — a king's name, an official's title, a short prayer, a hunting scene. Most are drilled end to end so they can be strung on a thread or swung in a ring. Common length runs 6 mm to 40 mm, and most fall between 10 mm and 20 mm. Carved from steatite, a soft stone that hardens when fired, or moulded in faience, a quartz paste glazed blue or green in the kiln; the costly ones are green jasper, amethyst or carnelian.",
  "story": "The scarab is the one Egyptian amulet that is also a signature. From the end of the First Intermediate Period, about 2055 BCE, it becomes extremely common, and it pushes aside the cylinder seal and the button seal with its geometric designs. In the Middle Kingdom, officials have their names and titles cut on the base and press them into clay: the same object that guards its wearer also signs his letters.\n\nBy the early Middle Kingdom, about 2000 BCE, the beetle shape is enormously popular, and it stays popular through the rest of the pharaonic period. Neighbours take it up. From the middle Bronze Age, other peoples of the Mediterranean and the Near East import Egyptian scarabs and cut their own in Egyptian or in local styles, most of all in the Levant. Canaanite engravers add cross-hatching, native animals and the palm branch. Phoenician engravers pick the shape up in the Achaemenid period, from the later sixth century BCE into the mid-fourth, and Tharros on Sardinia becomes a production centre; Greek and Phoenician merchants carry them to the Etruscans in the fifth century BCE, and the Etruscan scarab runs at Vulci and Tarquinia from the last decades of the sixth century BCE.\n\nDating one is harder than it looks. A scarab bearing a pharaoh's name is usually of his reign — but not always. Scarabs carrying Old Kingdom names like Khufu, Khafre and Unas were most probably made much later, in the Twenty-fifth or Twenty-sixth Dynasty, when the old kings were being imitated. The throne name of Thutmose III, Men Kheper Re, turns up in vast numbers, many of them centuries after him: the hieroglyphs themselves came to be treated as protective, and the carver may not have understood what he was reproducing. *Inference —* an amulet whose whole point is a name is the amulet most likely to be copied, which is why the scarab is both the best dating tool Egyptology has and one of its worst traps.\n\nOne scarab fixes a shipwreck. A golden scarab inscribed with the name of Queen Nefertiti was lifted from the Uluburun wreck off Turkey, among the luxury cargo, and its inscription gives a frame for when the ship went down.",
  "how": "Carved from steatite and fired hard, or moulded in faience and glazed blue or green. The base is cut with the inscription, the back drilled lengthways, and the thing strung on thread, hung from a necklace or mounted on a swivel ring. Ring mounts change over time: threads tied to the finger in the Old Kingdom, bezels in the Middle Kingdom, cast scarabs on gold wire in the New Kingdom. Most glazes have worn off, so a steatite scarab that reads white or brown in a museum tray was green or blue when it was made.\n\nThree classes go with the dead rather than the living: heart scarabs, pectoral scarabs sewn onto the chest with a separate pair of outstretched wings from the Twenty-fifth Dynasty on, and naturalistic scarabs, 2 to 3 cm long, carved in the round with a suspension loop running crossways.",
  "today": "The shape outlived the practice. Scarabs are made now as jewellery and sold in Cairo, Luxor and the airport shops, and cut stone and faience versions turn up in every dealer's tray. Forgery is old: the Twenty-fifth Dynasty was already making scarabs with fourth-dynasty names on them, so a 'later copy' is a category inside the ancient material, not only a modern problem. As of 2026 no source read for this record puts a figure on how much of the market is modern."
 },
 "dating": {
  "period": "Middle Kingdom to the late pharaonic period",
  "from_year": -1999,
  "to_year": -29,
  "living": false,
  "label": "c. 2000 BCE to the end of pharaonic Egypt",
  "method": "excavated",
  "circa": true,
  "tier": "cited",
  "source": "s:wp-scarab-artifact",
  "note": "The from_year is the source's 'by the early Middle Kingdom (approx. 2000 BC)'. The source ends the run at 'the rest of the pharaonic period and beyond'; 30 BCE is the conventional close of pharaonic Egypt and is this project's arithmetic, not a date read off the source. Phoenician and Etruscan scarabs run inside this span."
 },
 "object": {
  "form": "pendant",
  "materials": [
   "faience",
   "carnelian",
   "gold",
   "glass",
   "agate"
  ],
  "worn": [
   "neck",
   "finger",
   "chest",
   "grave"
  ],
  "made_by": "seal-cutters and faience workshops; officials had their own names and titles cut on the base",
  "inscription": "a king's or an official's name and titles; short prayers or mottos from the New Kingdom on; hunting scenes",
  "script": "Egyptian hieroglyphic",
  "length_mm": 20,
  "colour": [
   "blue-green",
   "green",
   "white",
   "brown"
  ],
  "single_use": false,
  "source": "s:wp-scarab-artifact",
  "note": "The source publishes a range: common length 6–40 mm, most between 10 mm and 20 mm. 20 is the top of that usual band, not an average this project calculated. Steatite and green jasper and amethyst are named in the source but have no key in materials.json."
 },
 "against": [
  {
   "harm": "the-dead",
   "who": "Egyptian funerary practice, as summarised by Egyptologists",
   "source": "s:wp-scarab-artifact",
   "tier": "cited",
   "note": "funerary scarabs formed part of the battery of amulets placed on Late Period mummies"
  },
  {
   "harm": "bad-luck",
   "who": "the later use of the hieroglyphs Men Kheper Re, which the source says 'seem to have become regarded as a protective charm in themselves'",
   "source": "s:wp-scarab-artifact",
   "tier": "cited"
  }
 ],
 "holdings": [
  {
   "museum": "british-museum",
   "what": "Egyptian scarabs and scarab seals",
   "source": "s:wp-british-museum"
  },
  {
   "museum": "met",
   "what": "scarabs and stamp seals in the Egyptian galleries",
   "source": "s:wp-metropolitan-museum-of-art",
   "open_access": true
  },
  {
   "museum": "petrie",
   "what": "Petrie's excavated scarab and amulet series",
   "source": "s:wp-petrie-museum-of-egyptian-archaeology"
  }
 ],
 "kin": [
  {
   "to": "heart-scarab",
   "as": "the funerary member of this family — same beetle, but sized to the chest, inscribed with a spell and told to keep quiet at the weighing",
   "rel": "descendant"
  },
  {
   "to": "scarab-sign",
   "as": "the sign this object is a body for: the beetle that rolls the sun up at daybreak",
   "rel": "motif"
  },
  {
   "to": "wedjat-eye",
   "as": "the other amulet Egypt made by the thousand; the eye went over the embalmer's incision, the scarab over the heart",
   "rel": "contrast"
  },
  {
   "to": "egyptian-amulet-craft",
   "as": "the tradition that cut it, and the one that turned an amulet into an office seal",
   "rel": "tradition"
  },
  {
   "to": "faience",
   "as": "the moulded material that made it cheap by the tray",
   "rel": "material"
  },
  {
   "to": "carnelian",
   "as": "the hardstone version, cut not moulded, and costlier",
   "rel": "material"
  },
  {
   "to": "grave-deposit",
   "as": "the practice that is why so many survive at all",
   "rel": "practice"
  },
  {
   "to": "flinders-petrie",
   "as": "the excavator whose sequence work made a scarab something you could date a layer with",
   "rel": "person"
  },
  {
   "to": "dating-a-charm",
   "as": "the long read on how a charm gets a date — and this object is its hardest case, because a king's name on it need not be his century",
   "rel": "story"
  },
  {
   "to": "met-egyptian-galleries",
   "as": "a room where a tray of them can be read against each other",
   "rel": "place"
  }
 ],
 "confusable_with": [
  {
   "id": "heart-scarab",
   "tell": "size and piercing: a heart scarab is 4–12 cm, usually dark green or black stone, and usually not drilled for suspension"
  },
  {
   "id": "wedjat-eye",
   "tell": "if the back is a beetle it is a scarab, whatever is cut on the flat face"
  }
 ],
 "links": [
  {
   "label": "Scarab (artifact) — Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scarab_(artifact)"
  }
 ],
 "sources": [
  "s:wp-scarab-artifact",
  "s:wp-heart-scarab",
  "s:wp-egyptian-faience",
  "s:wp-amulet",
  "s:wp-british-museum",
  "s:wp-metropolitan-museum-of-art",
  "s:wp-petrie-museum-of-egyptian-archaeology"
 ],
 "provenance": {
  "default": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:wp-scarab-artifact"
  },
  "fields": {
   "text.today": {
    "tier": "inference",
    "note": "the modern market is reasoned from the object's ubiquity; no market survey was read"
   },
   "dating": {
    "tier": "cited",
    "source": "s:wp-scarab-artifact",
    "note": "the closing year is conventional arithmetic, flagged in the dating note"
   }
  }
 },
 "images": [],
 "x_commons_files": [
  "File:Egypt Scarab.jpg",
  "File:Scarab MET DP109365.jpg"
 ],
 "confidence": "high",
 "updated": "2026-09-16",
 "blurb": "A beetle, carved or moulded, with a flat underside cut as a seal. The back shows the head, the wing case and the legs; the base carries hieroglyphs — a king's name, an official's title, a short prayer, a hunting scene.",
 "region_terms": [
  {
   "key": "ancient-egypt",
   "name": "Ancient Egypt",
   "hemi": [
    "N",
    "E"
   ],
   "note": "Nile valley and delta, Predynastic through Roman Egypt"
  },
  {
   "key": "levant",
   "name": "The Levant",
   "hemi": [
    "N",
    "E"
   ]
  },
  {
   "key": "rome-italy",
   "name": "Rome and Italy",
   "hemi": [
    "N",
    "E"
   ]
  },
  {
   "key": "iberia",
   "name": "Iberia",
   "hemi": [
    "N",
    "W"
   ]
  },
  {
   "key": "maghreb",
   "name": "The Maghreb",
   "hemi": [
    "N",
    "E"
   ],
   "note": "Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya"
  }
 ],
 "hemispheres": [
  "E",
  "N",
  "W"
 ],
 "kin_out": [
  {
   "to": "heart-scarab",
   "type": "amulet",
   "name": "Heart scarab",
   "as": "the funerary member of this family — same beetle, but sized to the chest, inscribed with a spell and told to keep quiet at the weighing",
   "rel": "descendant"
  },
  {
   "to": "scarab-sign",
   "type": "motif",
   "name": "The beetle",
   "as": "the sign this object is a body for: the beetle that rolls the sun up at daybreak",
   "rel": "motif"
  },
  {
   "to": "wedjat-eye",
   "type": "amulet",
   "name": "Wedjat eye",
   "as": "the other amulet Egypt made by the thousand; the eye went over the embalmer's incision, the scarab over the heart",
   "rel": "contrast"
  },
  {
   "to": "egyptian-amulet-craft",
   "type": "tradition",
   "name": "Egyptian amulet craft",
   "as": "the tradition that cut it, and the one that turned an amulet into an office seal",
   "rel": "tradition"
  },
  {
   "to": "faience",
   "type": "material",
   "name": "Faience",
   "as": "the moulded material that made it cheap by the tray",
   "rel": "material"
  },
  {
   "to": "carnelian",
   "type": "material",
   "name": "Carnelian",
   "as": "the hardstone version, cut not moulded, and costlier",
   "rel": "material"
  },
  {
   "to": "grave-deposit",
   "type": "practice",
   "name": "Grave deposit",
   "as": "the practice that is why so many survive at all",
   "rel": "practice"
  },
  {
   "to": "flinders-petrie",
   "type": "person",
   "name": "Flinders Petrie",
   "as": "the excavator whose sequence work made a scarab something you could date a layer with",
   "rel": "person"
  },
  {
   "to": "dating-a-charm",
   "type": "story",
   "name": "Dating a charm",
   "as": "the long read on how a charm gets a date — and this object is its hardest case, because a king's name on it need not be his century",
   "rel": "story"
  },
  {
   "to": "met-egyptian-galleries",
   "type": "place",
   "name": "The Egyptian galleries, the Metropolitan Museum of Art",
   "as": "a room where a tray of them can be read against each other",
   "rel": "place"
  }
 ],
 "source_list": [
  {
   "id": "s:wp-scarab-artifact",
   "kind": "encyclopedia",
   "title": "Scarab (artifact)",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scarab_(artifact)",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16",
   "license": "CC BY-SA 4.0"
  },
  {
   "id": "s:wp-heart-scarab",
   "kind": "encyclopedia",
   "title": "Heart scarab",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_scarab",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16",
   "license": "CC BY-SA 4.0"
  },
  {
   "id": "s:wp-egyptian-faience",
   "kind": "encyclopedia",
   "title": "Egyptian faience",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_faience",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16",
   "license": "CC BY-SA 4.0"
  },
  {
   "id": "s:wp-amulet",
   "kind": "encyclopedia",
   "title": "Amulet",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amulet",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16",
   "license": "CC BY-SA 4.0"
  },
  {
   "id": "s:wp-british-museum",
   "kind": "encyclopedia",
   "title": "British Museum",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Museum",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16",
   "license": "CC BY-SA 4.0"
  },
  {
   "id": "s:wp-metropolitan-museum-of-art",
   "kind": "encyclopedia",
   "title": "Metropolitan Museum of Art",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_Museum_of_Art",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16",
   "license": "CC BY-SA 4.0"
  },
  {
   "id": "s:wp-petrie-museum-of-egyptian-archaeology",
   "kind": "encyclopedia",
   "title": "Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrie_Museum_of_Egyptian_Archaeology",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16",
   "license": "CC BY-SA 4.0"
  }
 ],
 "tiers": {
  "text.what": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:wp-scarab-artifact"
  },
  "text.story": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:wp-scarab-artifact"
  },
  "text.how": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:wp-scarab-artifact"
  },
  "text.today": {
   "tier": "inference",
   "note": "the modern market is reasoned from the object's ubiquity; no market survey was read"
  },
  "etymology": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:wp-scarab-artifact"
  },
  "dating": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:wp-scarab-artifact",
   "note": "the closing year is conventional arithmetic, flagged in the dating note"
  },
  "object": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:wp-scarab-artifact"
  }
 },
 "primary_image": null,
 "tag_facts": [],
 "recognition_facts": [],
 "acclaim": 0,
 "against_facts": [
  {
   "key": "the-dead",
   "label": "Danger to the dead",
   "gloss": "charms put in a grave for the person in it",
   "who": "Egyptian funerary practice, as summarised by Egyptologists",
   "quote": "",
   "source": "s:wp-scarab-artifact",
   "tier": "cited",
   "note": "funerary scarabs formed part of the battery of amulets placed on Late Period mummies"
  },
  {
   "key": "bad-luck",
   "label": "Bad luck, unspecified",
   "who": "the later use of the hieroglyphs Men Kheper Re, which the source says 'seem to have become regarded as a protective charm in themselves'",
   "quote": "",
   "source": "s:wp-scarab-artifact",
   "tier": "cited",
   "note": ""
  }
 ],
 "material_facts": [
  {
   "key": "faience",
   "label": "Faience",
   "kind": "fired",
   "note": "glazed quartz paste; Egypt's amulet material at scale"
  },
  {
   "key": "carnelian",
   "label": "Carnelian",
   "kind": "stone",
   "note": "red; Egypt's colour for blood and life"
  },
  {
   "key": "gold",
   "label": "Gold",
   "kind": "metal"
  },
  {
   "key": "glass",
   "label": "Glass",
   "kind": "fired"
  },
  {
   "key": "agate",
   "label": "Agate and onyx",
   "kind": "stone"
  }
 ],
 "worn_facts": [
  {
   "key": "neck",
   "label": "At the neck",
   "group": "body",
   "note": "the world's default position"
  },
  {
   "key": "finger",
   "label": "On a finger",
   "group": "body"
  },
  {
   "key": "chest",
   "label": "On the chest, under the shirt",
   "group": "body"
  },
  {
   "key": "grave",
   "label": "In the grave",
   "group": "placed",
   "note": "most surviving ancient amulets are here because somebody was buried in them"
  }
 ],
 "form_fact": {
  "key": "pendant",
  "label": "Pendant"
 },
 "holding_facts": [
  {
   "key": "british-museum",
   "label": "The British Museum",
   "city": "London",
   "country": "GB",
   "url": "",
   "what": "Egyptian scarabs and scarab seals",
   "accession": "",
   "source": "s:wp-british-museum"
  },
  {
   "key": "met",
   "label": "The Metropolitan Museum of Art",
   "city": "New York",
   "country": "US",
   "url": "",
   "open": true,
   "what": "scarabs and stamp seals in the Egyptian galleries",
   "accession": "",
   "source": "s:wp-metropolitan-museum-of-art"
  },
  {
   "key": "petrie",
   "label": "The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology",
   "city": "London",
   "country": "GB",
   "url": "",
   "what": "Petrie's excavated scarab and amulet series",
   "accession": "",
   "source": "s:wp-petrie-museum-of-egyptian-archaeology"
  }
 ],
 "span": "2000 BCE – 30 BCE",
 "country_names": [
  {
   "iso": "EG",
   "name": "Egypt"
  },
  {
   "iso": "IL",
   "name": "Israel"
  },
  {
   "iso": "PS",
   "name": "Palestine"
  },
  {
   "iso": "SY",
   "name": "Syria"
  },
  {
   "iso": "LB",
   "name": "Lebanon"
  },
  {
   "iso": "TN",
   "name": "Tunisia"
  },
  {
   "iso": "IT",
   "name": "Italy"
  },
  {
   "iso": "ES",
   "name": "Spain"
  },
  {
   "iso": "TR",
   "name": "Turkey"
  }
 ],
 "kin_in": [
  {
   "from": "cowrie-strand",
   "type": "amulet",
   "name": "Cowrie strand",
   "as": "the Egyptian seal-amulet whose cowrie-shaped cousin, the cowroid, copies this shell in stone and faience from the early second millennium BCE",
   "rel": "kin"
  },
  {
   "from": "heart-scarab",
   "type": "amulet",
   "name": "Heart scarab",
   "as": "the parent shape — the same beetle, worn by the living and used to stamp their letters",
   "rel": "origin"
  },
  {
   "from": "wedjat-eye",
   "type": "amulet",
   "name": "Wedjat eye",
   "as": "the other amulet Egypt made by the thousand; the scarab went under the wrappings at the heart, the eye over the incision",
   "rel": "contrast"
  },
  {
   "from": "egyptian-amulet-craft",
   "type": "tradition",
   "name": "Egyptian amulet craft",
   "as": "its other mass product, and the one that doubled as an office seal",
   "rel": "carries"
  },
  {
   "from": "scarab-sign",
   "type": "motif",
   "name": "The beetle",
   "as": "the amulet and seal itself, which is the sign's body",
   "rel": "carried-by"
  },
  {
   "from": "carnelian",
   "type": "material",
   "name": "Carnelian",
   "as": "sard is named as a stone of Egyptian and Phoenician scarabs, engraved on the flat underside",
   "rel": "material"
  },
  {
   "from": "cowrie",
   "type": "material",
   "name": "Cowrie",
   "as": "the cowroid is the Egyptian seal amulet that copies this shell, cut the way a scarab is cut",
   "rel": "parallel"
  },
  {
   "from": "faience",
   "type": "material",
   "name": "Faience",
   "as": "the form the sources name first when they say what faience was mostly used for",
   "rel": "material"
  },
  {
   "from": "foundation-deposit",
   "type": "practice",
   "name": "Foundation deposit",
   "as": "among the objects Egyptian deposits were filled with, alongside amulets, food and miniature tools",
   "rel": "carried-by"
  },
  {
   "from": "khan-el-khalili",
   "type": "place",
   "name": "Khan el-Khalili",
   "as": "sold here now as jewellery; the excavated ones are a mile away in the Egyptian Museum",
   "rel": "carries"
  },
  {
   "from": "met-egyptian-galleries",
   "type": "place",
   "name": "The Egyptian galleries, the Metropolitan Museum of Art",
   "as": "the other Egyptian class the 1906–1941 seasons supplied with find-spots attached",
   "rel": "carries"
  },
  {
   "from": "flinders-petrie",
   "type": "person",
   "name": "Flinders Petrie",
   "as": "the other Egyptian mass-produced amulet his sequence dating and his typology both had to handle",
   "rel": "kin"
  },
  {
   "from": "metropolitan-museum",
   "type": "org",
   "name": "The Metropolitan Museum of Art",
   "as": "another Egyptian class the 1906–1941 excavations supplied with find-spots attached",
   "rel": "carries"
  },
  {
   "from": "petrie-amulet-plates",
   "type": "art",
   "name": "Petrie's amulet plates",
   "as": "the other class that runs to page after page here",
   "rel": "carries"
  }
 ]
}