สัญลักษณ์ด้วง (สคารับ)The beetle𓆣

The reading Egyptians gave the beetle is stated in the sources: Khepri rolls the sun across the sky at daybreak the way the beetle rolls a ball of dung, so the sign stands for the sun's journey, for rebirth and for regeneration. The beetle-shaped amulet became enormously popular by the early Middle Kingdom, around 2000 BCE, and stayed popular for the rest of the pharaonic period and beyond. By the end of the First Intermediate Period, about 2055 BCE, scarabs had become extremely common and largely replaced cylinder seals and circular button seals with simple geometric designs.

The sign travelled as an object, not as an idea. From the middle Bronze Age other peoples of the Mediterranean and the Middle East imported scarabs from Egypt and made their own, in Egyptian or in local styles, especially in the Levant. A scarab inscribed with Nefertiti's name was among the luxury goods on the Uluburun wreck off Turkey. Inference — a portable seal that also functions as a charm is unusually easy to export, and the Levantine copies are evidence of trade in the thing rather than of the Egyptian theology travelling with it.

What is cut on the base changed over time. Pharaohs' names in the Middle Kingdom, then officials' names and titles used as administrative seals, then short prayers or mottoes in the New Kingdom and Third Intermediate Period, which are hard to translate. Some carry hunting scenes. Commemorative scarabs were made for political purposes, notably the large ones of Amenhotep III.

Materials are the other half of the story. Most were carved from steatite — a soft stone that hardens when fired — or moulded in Egyptian faience, then glazed blue or green and fired. Hardstone examples are green jasper, amethyst and carnelian. Most were originally green or blue; weathering has left most steatite ones looking white or brown, so a museum tray reads paler than the original trade did.

Scarabs are made by the thousand as souvenirs in Egypt, and the shape is standard jewellery and tattoo flash worldwide. The ancient ones are also the most forged class of Egyptian antiquity this atlas covers, which is a matter for the long read on authentication rather than for this page.