Scarab with a Representation of Seth-Baal and Uraeus

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The ancient Egyptians adored the dung beetle as a symbol of the daily passage of the sun, as it pushed the dung ball forward it mirrored the sun disk moving across the sky. From the First Intermediate Period to the Late Period, the scarab was a popular shape for small amulets and stamp seals as a symbol for creation and resurrection. Already in the early 2nd millennium B.C., Egyptian scarab seals spread to the Levant and Crete and soon local imitations began to appear. On the underside of this scarab, an aroused cobra (uraeus) is placed in front of a figure of the god Seth-Baal, identified by his outstretched wing, long ears and snout. Above him is a sun disk. Such representations were very popular on stamp seals during the late New Kingdom, when Seth became a kind of patron deity of the kings of the Ramesside dynasties (Dynasty 19–20, ca. 1295–1070 B.C.). Seth was closely identified with the Near Eastern god Baal, becoming a ‘hybrid’ deity, the winged Seth-Baal.

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