Scarab Beetles in Ancient Egypt
By far the most important amulet in ancient Egypt was the scarab,
symbolically as sacred to the Egyptians as the cross is to Christians.
 Scarab
dung beetles lay eggs in a pellet which they roll along and the Egyptians
regarded this action as an image of the sun and its course through the
heavens, rolled by a gigantic beetle. Scarabs are associated with
the Egyptian god, Khepri. It was Khepri
that pushed the sun across the sky. The scarab beetle became an
ancient Egyptian symbol for rebirth, the ability to be reborn. Each day
the sun disappeared, always to rise again and be reborn the following
day.
The god Khepri, which literally means "He who is Coming into
Being", was a creator god and a solar deity. He was
represented as a scarab or dung beetle, or as a man with a beetle
head. The scarab beetle was observed to roll it's eggs in a ball
of dung along the ground, and the ball was identified with the sun. The
baby beetles were seen to emerge from the primeval mound and so dung beetles
were thought capable of spontaneous creation.
Scarabs were worn as jewellery and amulets in ancient Egypt. The
Heart Scarab, which had hieroglyphic inscriptions
on the back, was often buried with the dead to ensure the rebirth of
the deceased in the afterlife. They were placed over the heart of
the deceased to keep it from confessing sins during its interrogation
in the "Weighing of the Heart"
ceremony.
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