Scarab

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This scarab was made out of amethyst, a semi-precious stone. Its flat underside is undecorated, which is often the case for scarabs in semi-precious stones. Possibly the shape and material of such scarabs might have been regarded as providing enough magical power without added text or images, though an additional inscribed gold plate might have originally covered the scarab’s base. The scarab beetle’s habit of rolling large dung balls across the ground was associated by the ancient Egyptians with the travel of the sun. They also thought that this beetle self-generated spontaneously, and both aspects made the scarab a potent symbol of creation and regeneration.

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