Translated Egyptian Blue Paste Glass Heart Scarab

Ancient Egypt, Late Period to Ptolemaic, ca. 664 to 30 BCE. A large heart scarab formed from paste glass (known as frit) of a stunning dark cobalt-blue hue, formed to resemble the sacred beetle, with the top of the amulet given lifelike details of wings, legs, and head. On its underside, inscribed in five lines, are a series of hieroglyphs, probably from the Book of the Dead. This example has not been drilled through like many others. Size: 2.5" W x 0.7" H (6.4 cm x 1.8 cm)

The ancient Egyptians were familiar with five different types of scarabs, the details of which were approximated in their designs of objects representing these insects. A comparison with these line drawings by Flinders Petrie, the so-called Father of Modern Archaeology, reveals that our scarab exhibits the major features of this insect. The distinctive design of this object's clypeus as a series of triangular projections indicates that the insect represented is the Scarabaeus sacer, the dung beetle revered by the ancient Egyptians from the remotest times in their millennia-old history.

The ancient Egyptians observed the Scarabaeus sacer in nature and its behavior led to two complementary interpretations. The similarity of the ball of dung to the round shape of the sun led them to assume that a large, invisible scarab actually propelled the sun across the heavens each day. This assumption can be compared to that of the Greeks and Romans who thought that their sun was carried across the heavens by Apollo/Helios. That assumption was linked to a second, namely, the observation that the scarab also rolled the ball of dung into its burrow in the field from which newly born scarabs were believed to have emerged. Since the sun was regarded as the coming into being of the day and the new born scarabs were regarded as coming into being because of the dung ball, the scarab was regarded as the verb 'to come into being,' kheper, in the ancient Egyptian language and its appearance was used as the basis for the design that hieroglyph (Gardiner, Sign List L1).

The flat bottom of the scarab turned out to be an ideal place for inscriptions, as exhibited by our example which was created by casting glass in a mold, resulting in an object created in that luxurious, expensive material. That casting included some of the details of the top of the scarab as well as border of dentils, or box-like elements, which frame the outer perimeter of the bottom plate. Some of the details of the top and the entire inscription in rows of hieroglyphs, separated by divider lines, were cold-worked, that is, they were incised by hand into the glass with a sharp tool after the object was removed from its mold and had cooled. The small size of our scarab and the relative hardness of the glass is one of the reasons contributing to that inscription's irregularities, which nevertheless enable one to identify the inscription as Spell 30B of the so-called Book of the Dead. That spell deals with the function of the heart scarab. After the deceased was obliged to recite the Negative Confession in the Hall of Judgement, his heart was placed on a scale/balance to determine whether the deceased had committed perjury and lied during that recitation. Because ancient Egyptians thought that one's conscience resided in the heart, the heart could not tell a lie. The purpose of the heart scarab, therefore, was to prevent the deceased's heart from testifying against the deceased. One will find an extended philological commentary of our heart scarab's inscription at the end of this essay, but for one's present purposes here is one suggested English translation of Spell 30B:

'O my heart of my mother! O my heart of my mother! O my heart of my different forms! Do not stand up as a witness against me, do not be opposed to me in the tribunal, do not be hostile to me in the presence of the Keeper of the Balance, for you are my ka which was in my body, the protector who made my members hale. Go forth to the happy place whereto we speed, do not make my name stink to the Entourage who make men. Do not tell lies about me in the present of the god. It is indeed well that you should hear!'

The efficacy of Spell 30B on the heart scarab combined with the 'coming into being' connotations of the scarab itself suggested that the deceased would come into being, resurrected in the hereafter. The design of our scarab is very naturalistic and finds correspondences with examples created during the Egyptian Late Period, roughly, between Dynasty XXVI and the Ptolemaic Period, 664-30 BC.

A proposed reading follows; angular brackets enclose omitted elements. It is possible that the first person singular suffix-pronoun .i is sometimes written with a vertical stroke: "[My] heart [of my] mother!* [My heart of my] mother! [My] heart of [my] coming into being! [You] shall not act (??)** against [me in] the great Tribunal (?) . . . of Osiris! Take possession of/make fast (??)*** the balance! Thoth (?), Great One (??)"

References: Daphna Ben-Tor, The Scarab. A Reflection of Ancient Egypt (Jerusalem, 1993), for numerous examples from the Late Period, exhibiting similar designs.

Sir W.M. Flinders Petrie, Scarabs and Cylinders with Names (London, 1917).

R. O. Faulkner, translator, Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead [introduction by J. P. Allen] (New York, 2005), 60-63.

T. G. Allen, The Egyptian Book of the Dead Documents in the Oriental Institute Museum at the University of Chicago (,Chicago, 1960) , 115).

Notes: John Gee, "Of Heart Scarabs and Balance Weights: A New Interpretation of Book of the Dead 30B," Journal of the Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities 36 (2009) 1-15, takes the incipit of the text as "My heart for my balance weight."

** Normally the prohibitions or vetitives in this text are written with the Middle Egyptian negative imperative m, which as far as I can tell is absent here. I am suggesting very tentatively here that the signs at the end of the second line include the Late Egyptian negative bn, and that perhaps we should understand a faulty writing of a Late Egyptian negation, " shall not."

*** I am, again tentatively, proposing to take the last signs of line 4 as TAr, "take possession of, make fast, fasten," Faulkner Dictionary p. 303. On the basis of the photographs the last element at the end of line 4 is a sign or damage to the scarab. If the former, perhaps it could be Hr, which might provide the expression 'fasten on' (Faulkner, ibid.).

Provenance: private East Coast, USA collection; ex-Madame Frances Artuner collection, Brussels, Belgium, acquired in the 1960s

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#152894 Dimensions: Condition Report: Small chips and losses from edges, but overall in very nice condition with rich deposits in the lower profile areas and small pits on the surface that do not obscure the details. The hieroglyphs on the underside are all in good condition and readable.