Scarab Finger Ring

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The scarab (kheper) beetle was one of the most popular amulets in ancient Egypt because the insect was a symbol of the sun god Re. This association evolved from the Egyptians' misunderstanding of the scarab's life cycle. An adult beetle lays its eggs inside a ball of dung, which is then buried underground. When the young beetles hatch, the only portion of this process easily visible to an observer is the beetle emerging fully developed from a dung ball, a seemingly magical event. Thus, the Egyptian word for scarab translates as "to come into being." The scarab forms food balls out of fresh dung using its back legs to push the oversized spheres along the ground toward its burrow. The Egyptians equated this process with the sun's daily cycle across the sky, believing that a giant scarab moved the sun from the eastern horizon to the west each day, making the amulet a potent symbol of rebirth. The earliest scarab amulets appeared in the First Intermediate Period (ca. 2124 B.C.). During the Middle and New Kingdoms, they often were used as seals as well as amulets (ca. 2030–1070 B.C.). Scarabs remained common amulets in the Late Period (ca. 712–332 B.C.), and were still in use in Greek and Roman times (332 B.C.–364 A.D.).

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