Scarab of Wah

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This scarab ring and three scarab bracelets (40.3.12-.14) were found in the wrappings over Wah's crossed wrists. In Wah's time, the scarab was a relatively new invention having been developed only about a century earlier, sometime in the middle of the First Intermediate Period (about. 2100-2030 B.C.). The amulet is shaped like a dung beetle, scarabaeus sacer, which is also the source of its modern name. The dung beetle was "kheperer" in ancient Egyptian. Having watched the small creatures push huge balls of dung, the ancient Egyptians imagined the sun being pushed into the sky at dawn by a beetle, and they referred to the rising sun as "Kheperi." The word for "to become" or "come into being" was "kheper," and the beetle hieroglyph was used to spell all of these words. As such, the scarab became a powerful amulet for rejuvenation in this life and reincarnation in the next. Some scarabs, like this one, are a simple oval shape with little or no decoration. Others, like Wah's two silver examples, are more elaborate depictions of the insect.

Egyptian Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Met collection of ancient Egyptian art consists of approximately 30,000 objects of artistic, historical, and cultural importance, dating from about 300,000 BCE to the 4th century CE. A signifcant percentage of the collection is derived from the Museum's three decades of archaeological work in Egypt, initiated in 1906 in response to increasing interest in the culture of ancient Egypt.

Metropolitan Museum of Art