The Goldsmith – Jeweler Of Egypt

(via 5000 Years of Gems and Jewelry) Frances Rogers and Alice Beard writes:

3. The Scarab

Perhaps the most treasured and most widely used of all luck-bringing symbols was the scarab—an image of little beetle. The beetles were wrought in gold, or modeled in clay and glazed with green, or carved from any sort of ornamental stone known to the ancients, from the very soft steatite to the precious ruby. Tiny scarabs, no larger than a fly, were carved from turquoise, and huge ones, a yard wide across the back, were cut in basalt. Scarabs were set in jewelry—neck ornaments, armlets, rings, etc. They were even set into furniture and into walls of houses. In fact, one could scarcely have too many scarabs to guard against the evils of life, and they were as necessary to the dead as to the living.

Funeral scarabs, inscribed on the flat base with a magic charm quoted from the Book of the Dead, were an indispensable part of the Egyptian burial rites. In the elaborate preparation of a mummy the heart was removed and for it was substituted a scarab. If the dead were of royal blood the scarab might be a carved ruby or an emerald; and many of the little beetles, unstrung and unset, were scattered among the winding cloths and bound fast to the mummy. It has been suggested that the great quantities of scarabs found among the wrappings of the dead were intended as fees, to be paid by the soul of the deceased to the doorkeepers of the other world.

The Egyptian name given to the sacred beetle was Kheptra, or Kheper, a title which stems from a word meaning ‘to become, to come into being.’ The Egyptians, supposing that there was no female beetle, believed that the male laid the eggs ans was thus alone responsible for the propagation of the species. Therefore the beetle was looked upon as an emblem of the self-begotten deity, Kheperi, who typifies the rising sun born anew each morning. Also, the emergence from the earth-bound grub and the upward flight of the beetle were like the soul leaving the body and ascending toward the heavens.

Starting in ancient Egypt, where the scarab had significance as a religious symbol, the custom of wearing scarabs spread into Phonecia, Etruria, and Greece. Indeed, in the course of centuries the scarab has found its way into many lands and become what seems to be a time defying motive of design for jewelry.

Most of us, today, regard a jewel from two angles only. We ask, is it beautiful? Is it rare and costly? Further than that we do not inquire. Nevertheless, there is great interest added to our jewelry when we can trace in unbroken sequence the history of its design or understand its symbolism, if it has any. ‘Mirrors of ancient feeling,’ one writer calls jewels of past ages; therefore we may regard the little scarab as a particularly clear mirror which has caught and held fast a reflection of the minds and hearts of men who lived in a world thousands of years younger than the world we know.

The Goldsmith – Jeweler Of Egypt (continued)