Scarab in ancient Egyptian - "khepri". The name Khepri was borne by the ancient Egyptian god of the rising sun, the creator of the world and man, who was depicted as a scarab or as a man with a scarab head. Why did the scarab beetle become a symbol and personification of the Egyptian solar deity?
Who is he - a sacred scarab?
Scarab beetles (Latin Scarabaeus sacer) are often found on the coasts of the Mediterranean and Black Seas, in Southern and Eastern Europe, on the Arabian Peninsula, in the Crimea, Turkey and, of course, in Egypt.
The scarab is a dull black insect with a rounded smooth body 25–35 cm long. Old scarabs turn shiny black. On the head of the beetle there is a frontal protrusion and eyes, divided into upper and lower parts. On each leg of the scarab there are spurs with which it digs the ground. Their sex differences are poorly expressed. The lower part of the body is covered with dark brown hairs. Scarabs live for about two years, they spend almost their entire life underground, coming to the surface at night. Scarabs hibernate, burrowing into the ground to a depth of 2 meters. The flight of beetles from the ground to the surface begins in March and lasts until mid-July.
The main feature of beetles is their feeding method. Scarabs belong to dung beetles, and feed on the dung of cattle - cows, horses, sheep.
The ancient Egyptians noticed the unusual behavior of scarabs: as soon as a herd of horses or a herd of cows pass along the road, leaving behind heaps of manure, a whole swarm of black scarab beetles flocks there. Each of them begins to diligently sculpt balls from the dung, rolling them along the road, gradually turning them into an almost ideal sphere, often exceeding the size and weight of the scarab itself, and bury the dung ball in the ground, then use it for food and as a breeding ground for offspring.
Promotional video:
Pairs of scarabs are formed during the harvesting of dung balls. The "Sisyphean labor" of the male scarab attracts the female and they jointly search for a suitable place, dig a 15–30 cm deep mink in the ground. After mating, the male leaves, and the female begins to roll pear-shaped balls, lays eggs in this nutrient medium, and covers the mink with earth, pouring a "pyramid" on top.
Beetle larvae hatch after 1–2 weeks. Within a month, the scarab offspring feed on food that their parents prepared for them, and then the larvae are reborn into pupae. In unfavorable weather, pupae remain in the burrow for the winter. In spring, young beetles leave their burrows and come to the surface. The scarab appears underground to live on the ground and in the air - after all, these beetles fly perfectly!
This unique scarab beetle, widespread in Western Europe, North Africa and Central Asia, has become an ancient magical symbol, in religion, not only for the Egyptians. Skarabei was "deified" by many African tribes and the ancient peoples of the Caucasus. However, it was in ancient Egypt that the cult of the scarab acquired a truly epic proportions.
Where do the ancient Egyptian myths about scarabs come from?
The scarab beetle in ancient Egypt became a sacred symbol by about the 3rd millennium BC.
Researcher of ancient petroglyphs in the Maharashtra region of India, scientist Misra (Bibhu Dev Misra) discovered a unique petroglyph of a scarab, created around 7000 BC. Mr. Misra claims that the ancient petroglyph predates the earliest dates of ancient Egyptian civilization by about four thousand years.
Goddess Hut-Hor = "House-Mountain" - great mother -3400-2920 BC.
The sign of the Scarab personifies Sirius, in the constellation Canis Major, which is the classic winter constellation for the northern hemisphere. The goddess Khat-khor ("house of Horus", that is, "sky") was associated with Sirius, depicted as a cow with Sirius between the horns.
Bibhu Dev Misra writes in his article that the petroglyphs he found indicate an older system of astrological ideas about the celestial sphere and attributes the appearance of constellation symbols to a period of about 10,000 BC. Perhaps our astrological knowledge is the legacy of a lost civilization that flourished during the Ice Age.
Mr. Misra suggests that ancient petroglyphs may reflect "esoteric knowledge about the most ancient civilizations of the" Golden Age "of mankind, which perished during the cataclysms of the" Younger Dryas "era (10 900 BC - 9700 BC) when our planet was hit by numerous fragments of a giant comet.
Ancient petroglyphs recently discovered in Maharashtra probably indicate the existence of some extremely ancient forgotten culture, thousands of years before any traditional civilization known in history, whose symbolism is reflected in the sacred myths and scriptures of later cultures and civilizations around the world.
"Scarab" is a symbol of the movement of the sun, its creative and life-giving power.
Observing the scarabs, the Egyptians noticed an interesting feature - the beetles always roll their balls from east to west, and fly only at noon. The attentive Egyptians saw in this a connection between beetles and the sun. The sun travels from east to west and hides behind the horizon to reappear in the east tomorrow.
According to the ideas of the ancient Egyptians, the sun was a deity that brought life to all living things and resurrection after death. The Egyptians correlated the cycle of development of a scarab inside a dung ball and its emergence to the surface of the earth in spring with the movement of the sun.
The similarity struck the ancient Egyptians so much that they began to personify the rising sun with the god Khepri (Khepera, Haper), depicting him with a scarab instead of a head.
Embodying the rising morning sun with the god Khepri (hpr - "arisen", from hpr - "to arise, to occur"), the Egyptians worshiped the god Ra (al. Egypt: ri-a; Copt.: Re (reɪ) or Rē) - daytime the sun and the god Atum (Egyptian - tm) - the evening, setting sun.
Khepri partially took over the functions of the god of the solar disk Aten. Khepri was identified with Atum, Pa (Ra-Khepri), Amon (Amon-Khepri).
Atum-Khepri in the "Pyramid Texts" is called the creator of Osiris (Egyptian jst jrt, Usir) - the god of rebirth, the king of the underworld and the judge of the souls of the departed.
It was believed that Khepri arose out of himself (“he arose in his own name”), sometimes his father is called “the father of the gods” Nun (ancient Egyptian “nwn” [Naun] - “water”, “water”). In ancient Egyptian mythology, the father of the gods Nun existed at the beginning of time, as a primordial ocean, from which Ra emerged and began the creation of the world of Atum.
The meaning of the sacred symbol of the scarab probably has not changed over the millennia, because archaeologists have found failures, rings and amulets with scarabs in various cultural layers of the excavations. The scarab was often combined with other sacred images. For example, in the Cairo Museum you can see many ankhs, which, among other symbols, depict sacred scarabs.
The scarab became in Egypt a symbol of the disciple's worker on his path to wisdom. Just as a scarab stubbornly and persistently transforms a formless, viscous mass of dung into a ball, in order to plant the seeds of life in it, a disciple walking the Path of Wisdom must transform the formless mass of his imperfections into an ideal, perfect shape of a ball, like a solar disk disappearing beyond the horizon of the earth and reborn in the east.
Even from the deepest underground darkness, where the scarab leaves its clutch, its offspring are born again, awakening and resurrecting, like divine power and wisdom that gives the newly born Soul the opportunity to fly away into a new life on earth.
Two snakes of wisdom are depicted next to the scarab, right and left, the student takes from each of them and forms his wisdom.
The most valuable, ancient and revered figure of a scarab can be found in the Karnak Temple, which is located near Luxor. In Luxor there is a statue of a sacred scarab; this place is especially revered by the locals.
Scarabs appeared in the painting of burial sarcophagi from about 1000 BC. Scarabs were often depicted rolling the sun's fireball, a symbol of the cyclical nature of the universe and eternal life. Dried scarab beetles were often placed in earthenware pylons, which apparently served as original funerary decorations, which were considered amulets that guaranteed the resurrection from the dead.
The role of the scarab in the life of ancient Egypt
The Egyptians had poetic religious texts that called the scarab a god that lives in the heart and protects the inner light of a person. The sacred symbol of the scarab gradually became a link between the divine principle and the human soul.
Many spells are associated with the scarab beetle, preserved in the "Texts of the Sarcophagi" and "Texts of the Pyramids". It is known that the Egyptians performed many magical rituals associated with the scarab.
The symbol of the sacred scarab accompanied the ancient Egyptians all their lives and together with them passed into the afterlife. If the body after death was mummified, like a scarab pupa, then instead of a heart, an image of a sacred beetle was inserted. The resurrection of the soul in the afterlife could not have happened without him. The ancient Egyptians understood the importance of the heart in the human body and, placing in its place the image of the sacred beetle, they believed that it represented the primary impulse for the rebirth of the soul. Somewhat later, instead of a figurine of a scarab beetle, the Egyptians made a heart of ceramics, and the names of the gods were depicted next to the symbol of the sacred beetle.
This scarab was found in the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun (1340-1331 BC), discovered by Howard Carter in November 1922. Pharaoh Tutankhamun died at the age of 19, his mummy in a golden sarcophagus and mask was placed in 2 wooden coffins. Another 3 sarcophagi of Tutankhamun were made of quartzite, covered with red granite. Around the sarcophagus there were four golden wooden chapels that occupied the entire room.
This amulet, decorated with the symbol of the sun god - an oval yellow stone, interested scientists from the Milanese Museum of Natural History. Researchers saw in this stone the key to solving one of the mysteries of the Sahara Desert.
The yellow stone, which Howard Carter, the discoverer of the tomb of Tutankhamun, considered a semi-precious chalcedony, turned out to be natural glass with extraordinary properties - it begins to melt at 1700 degrees Celsius, which is 500 degrees higher than the melting point of other samples of natural glass. It turns out that in the Egyptian Sahara, whole placers of such glass were found, from small pieces to lumps weighing 26 kilograms.
If this special glass is red-hot and thrown into cold water, it will not crack. That is, in terms of its characteristics, this silicate natural glass is superior to many modern high-tech glasses.
Back in the 30s of the last century, expeditions that traveled across the Sahara in search of treasures of ancient civilizations and lost cities encountered this unusual natural glass. According to experts, more than 1400 tons of this purest yellow-green glass are dispersed in the Saad plateau alone. Some of the found samples of natural glass have swirling patterns in black. The high content of iridium in the glass indicates their extraterrestrial origin. Iridium is found in some meteorites and comets. Scientists have hypothesized that in ancient times a large meteorite, similar to the Tunguska one, exploded over the Sahara. At the same time, from the high temperature, the sands of the Sahara rich in silicates melted and turned into glass.
This space meteorite glass has been used by humans for a long time. Explorers of the Sahara Desert often find knives, hatchets, and arrowheads made from this material nearly 100,000 years ago.
Before the discovery of the scarab in the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun, no one suspected that the ancient Egyptians knew about the extraordinary glass of a large sandy sea, many kilometers from the nearest dwelling. The scarab remains the only silicate glass jewel found among the treasures of Ancient Egypt.
What do scarab amulets mean in our time
At all times, people believed in the miraculous power of various amulets that bring good luck, wealth, happiness. Egyptian talismans among them are considered the most powerful, but safe for humans.
The scarab beetle mascot is one of the most revered. The scarab is considered a symbol of life, keeping its owner youthful and beautiful.
Initially, amulets were made from stones, both precious and ornamental. Green granite, marble, basalt or ceramics were used, which, after drying, were covered with green or blue azure. Now tourists are offered amulets made of metal, decorated with stones.