Patricia Umali Art in Antiquity
Don’t Forget to Write the Name and Date: Analysis of the Ancient Egyptian scarab
Looking back on history, many individuals hope for the opportunity to be remembered. Man does not like to think that his life is so insignificant in the greater scheme that no one will know his name in 100 years. Unfortunately, for many people, this is the case. However, there are certain individuals who prevail over this inevitable outcome and leave life eternal. Conquerors, like Alexander the Great, and philosophers, like Plato and Aristotle, will forever be referenced in literature and texts across the world. The average person will know their names for years to come. So what is it that makes a person memorable? Many would argue that, in order to be considered important enough to remember, a person must accomplish or experience something unique which could potentially affect a significant number of people. However, there are many figures that have done equally important things, but were forgotten. So this begs the question – what is that extra factor that makes a person well known? Is it beauty or brains? Who you know or how well you perform? One could argue that all a person really has to do is make sure their belongings are well labeled. As this paper explains, pharaoh Amenhotep III was excellent at labeling his things.
In Ancient Egypt, King Amenhotep III of the 18th dynasty ruled sometime between 1390 BC and 1350 BC. He charged the royal workshops to design an unusual series of stone scarabs containing texts of the king’s life (Lansing 1936: 12). Five different “issues” of these scarabs tell of his marriage to the Great Royal Wife Tiye, a wild bull hunt, a lion hunt, his marriage to Mitannian Princess Gilukhepa, and the construction of an artificial lake for Tiye (Lansing 1936: 12). Amenhotep III thoroughly dispensed over 200 stone scarabs across his kingdom. One such scarab, which can be found at the RISD Museum of Art in Providence, Rhode Island, details the king’s famous lion hunt.
The scarab was considered to be very sacred in Ancient Egyptian culture. The scarab at the RISD Museum is carved in the shape of the sacred dung beetle, a creature worshipped for its ability to seemingly emerge spontaneously out of the ground. The beetle’s ray-like antennae and its habit to roll dung across the ground established an association with the sun. The scarab-beetle god Khepri was said to push the sun along the sky in the same manner as the beetle with his ball of dung (McDevitt 2007). Scarabs were used in a variety of settings. They were often used as heart scarabs, put over the heart during burial to be weighed against the Feather of Truth during final judgment, or as amulets carried on the chest for good luck (McDevitt 2007). Commemorative scarabs such as Amenhotep III’s were used as a sort of newsletter sent to different regions of the kingdom to spread word of the king’s great feats.
The commemorative scarab at the RISD Museum of Art is a light, woody honey in color and is made of steatite, also called soapstone. Steatite is a softer, natural stone, which is easier to carve and cut than hard stone. Found in the Precambrian bedrock between the valley of the Nile and the Red Sea, soapstone was generally used for small objects. Its waxy smooth surface generates a texture closer to that of the real beetle. The scarab was carved with a chisel, indicated by the long, dull lines on the beetle’s back. The scarab is about nine centimeters long, six centimeters wide, and four centimeters thick. The object is carved to appear as if a scarab beetle emerges from its oval base, perhaps because the real beetle emerges from the ground. The oval is large enough to fit the hieroglyphics in a large font making it fairly easy to read. Yet, the scarab is still small enough to fit in one hand. The beetle’s legs are raised up and out of the tablet giving it greater height and dimension. Reasonable effort was made to carve the beetle’s head and pincers. Shallow lines are carved onto the beetle’s back to show the places where the wings divide and open for flight. On each of the scarab’s sides, there is a small carving of Amenhotep III’s cartouche underneath the legs. On the bottom of the oval base, the text is divided into eight rows of hieroglyphics. None of the hieroglyphs have any chunks missing or look worn at all. The object does not appear to be very heavy and could easily fit in the palm of a hand. The entire object has very screw scratches and remains intact as a whole beetle.
While the object is a fine piece of craftsmanship, it is a fairly simple object for something commissioned by the king. There are no precious stones or glass, perhaps in order to insure its mobility and prevent dismantlement. It also keeps with Egyptian art’s general scarcity of representation. The scarab’s shape and the rows of text are extremely uniform. This may have been done in order to keep focus on the king’s great story that is told on the scarab. The scarab’s dimensions and simplicity gave it a great chance for mobility. Its small size made it easier to transport. Since it was created under command of the king, it would have been more valuable and, with the small number of them available, turned it into a sort of collector’s item. The scarabs were probably only distributed to the upper class because only the rich were educated and able to read. Producing such a limited number insured that the scarabs would be treasured and well maintained, increasing the likelihood that it would last through the ages. Amenhotep III may have chosen to use scarab beetles as the medium for tales of his exploits because of both the practicality of the scarab’s size and its important role in the Egyptian culture. In Ancient Egyptian art, gods were never shown in their true form. Therefore, using a scarab beetle truly implies the god of the rising sun, Khepri. Khepri was believed to roll the sun in and out of the sky every day. Such an important god would be an ideal choice for a king who wished to be associated with power and significance.
So, Amenhotep III did know that spreading these scarabs to all regions of the kingdom would assure his subjects’ knowledge of his greatness. Did he realize it would help him thousands of years later? Most likely, yes. Amenhotep III has over 250 surviving statues, the most of any Egyptian pharaoh. These statues inform archaeologists a great deal about his life. The king also built several temples and added to the Temple at Karnak. Amenhotep III is the only pharaoh to have employed the use of commemorative scarabs to such a large scale. He clearly knew that a greater amount of objects bearing his name improved likelihood that the world would know his name. Amenhotep III experienced a different sort of materialism; one obsessed with how his possessions would benefit him when he was gone, not when he was alive.
In the present day, people still want to be remembered. Couples carve their names in hearts into trees and kids write their names into wet cement. In a grander fashion, these ancient rulers understood that the most reliable form of longevity was to be recorded in literature and to have monuments built in their name. Many other pharaohs built monuments and large tombs, but what helped set Amenhotep III apart was his unusual choice to use the scarab as a way to spread news of his life. His appreciation for these seemingly insignificant objects granted his fame. It’s always wise to appreciate the little things in life.
Bibliography
Lansing, Ambrose; 1936. A Commemorative Scarab of Amen-ḥotpe III. The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, Vol. 31, No. 1 (Jan., 1936), pp. 12-14
McDevitt, April; 2007. Scarab Beetle (kheper). Ancient Egypt: The Mythology. http://www.egyptianmyths.net/scarab.htm (accessed September 28, 2008)
Ancient Egypt. Oxford Art Online. http://www.oxfordartonline.com/
