Scarab

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This amulet was found bound on the right hand ring finger of a mummy. This amulet is carved of jasper, a very hard stone. The oval shape and lightly carved lines on the back identify it as a beetle, better known to Egyptologists as a scarab. Although the base of this scarab is uninscribed, the beetle itself acts as a power amulet for rebirth. The word for beetle in ancient Egyptian was similar in sound to the word meaning "come into being" (or become). The Egyptians also imagined that the sun as it was reborn while rising in the eastern sky each morning was being pushed into the sky by a beetle. These associations made the scarab one of the most popular amulets for the Egyptians, and it is one of the most common objects to survive from ancient times.

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