In the cabinet of Montfaucon, there is a Scarabæus in the middle of a large stone, with outspread feet; and two men, or women, who are perhaps priests, or priestesses, stand before it with clasped hands as if in adoration.[88] This gentleman also has remarked that on the Isiac table, there is the figure of a man in a sitting posture, who holds his hands toward a beetle which has the head of a man with a crescent upon it.[89] On this table there is another Scarab with the head of Isis.[90] Besides these Scarabæi with the heads of hawks, rams, men, and the goddess Isis, Mr. Hertz has in his possession a small Scarabæus in stone with the head of a cow.[91]
The mode of representing the Scarabæi on the monuments was frequently very arbitrary. Some are figured with, and some without the scutellum; and others are sometimes introduced with two scutella, one on either clypeus. An instance of this mode of representation, of which no example is to be found in nature, occurs in a large Scarabæus in the British museum.[92]
Among the ideographics of the hieroglyphic writing, the Scarabæus is found under several forms: seated with closed and spread wings upon the head of a god, it signifies the name of a god--a Creator;[93] and with the head and legs of a man, it is emblematic of the same creative power, or of Pthah. Another emblem of Pthah is supported by the arms of a man kneeling on the heavens, and surmounted by a winged Scarab supporting a globe or sun.[94]
The Scarabæus likewise belongs to the hieroglyphic signs as a syllabic phonetic; and with complement a mouth, signifies type, form, and transformation: flying, to mount--a phonetic of the later alphabet, with sound of H in the name of Pthah. Another phonetic of the later alphabet, belonging to the XXVI. dynasty, of the time of Domitianus and Trajanus, was a Scarabæus in repose.[95]
The Scarabæus entered also into the royal scutcheons. It first appeared in the XI. dynasty, and is found afterward in the XII., XIII., XIV., XVIII., XIX., XX., XXI., XXII., XXIII., and XXX.[96]
The most important monuments of the great edifice of Amenophis--the so-called Palace of Luxon,--in an historical sense, are said to be four great Scarabæi. They contain statements as to the frontier of the Egyptian empire under Amenophis at the time of his marriage with Taja. Rosellini has given copies and explanations of two of them. A third, now in the Louvre, states that the King, conqueror of the Lybian Shepherds, husband of Taja, made the foreign country of the Karai his southern frontier, the foreign land of Nharina (Mesopotamia) his northern. The inscription of the other Scarabæus, now in the Vatican, states that in the eleventh year and third month of his reign, King Amenhept made a great tank or lake to celebrate the festival of the waters; on which occasion he entered it in a barge of "the most gracious Disc of the Sun." This substitution, by the King, of the barge of the Disc of the Sun for the usual barge of Amun-Ra, is the _first_ indication of an heretical sun-worship.[97]