Scarab
The dung beetle, kheper, made into countless Egyptian amulets: the sign of the god Khepera and of new life after death.
Meaning
The beetle rolls a ball of dung, and Egyptians likened it to the unseen power that rolled the sun across the sky, the god Khepera; the act of rolling, Budge explains, gave the scarab its name kheper, “he who rolls”. Khepera was also a god of the resurrection, so the scarab became the sign of new life. The amulet of the heart was made in the form of a scarab from an early date: the heart scarab laid on the dead was inscribed with a chapter of the Book of the Dead that asks, “May nothing rise up against me in evidence.”
Origin and history
Budge traced Egyptian ideas about the scarab back to the time of the pyramids. Petrie records beetles buried in jars in prehistoric graves, and an alabaster case shaped like a scarab, to hang round the neck, from the First Dynasty.
What Greek writers believed
Later writers in Greek added beliefs of their own. According to Budge, Horapollo declared that no female scarab existed, so that the beetle stood for “only begotten”, a creature produced from itself.
Write in hieroglyphs
stringmash.comHieroglyphics translatorSpell a name in Egyptian hieroglyphs, letter by letter, and put it in a cartouche.Read next
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- In Crystal and gemstone loreLapis lazuliLapis lazuli is a deep blue stone flecked with gold-coloured pyrite, from mines in Afghanistan that GIA calls the oldest known gemstone sources. Babylon and Egypt prized it, and Pliny knew it as sapphiros.
See also
Ra, Eye of Horus, Was sceptre, Shen ring, Cartouche, Tyet.
Sources
- Egyptian Magic, E. A. Wallis Budge, 1901, Internet Archive (Getty Research Institute copy), Amulet 2
- Amulets, illustrated by the Egyptian collection in University College, London, W. M. Flinders Petrie, 1914, Constable and Company, London (Internet Archive), Nos. 90, 92
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from curves and waves.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed September 25, 2026. How we research
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