Description:
A beautiful heart scarab with a highly interesting detail in the inscription.
The scarab was made from mottled jasper, sage-green in colour with inclusions in beige and darker green. Every feature was carefully rendered. The pronotum (dorsal plate of the prothorax) and the elytra (wing cases) are delineated by incised double lines. The head is rectangular and is flanked by laterally bulging eyes; the clypeus (front plate) is semicircular and frilled. The legs are tucked beneath the body.
The flat underside of the scarab is inscribed with eight lines of hieroglyphic text, separated by seven straight lines, taken from spell 30 in the Book of the Dead. The text reads as follows:
To be spoken by the Osiris [blank] He says: O, my heart of my mother, my heart of my mother, my heart that I had on earth. Do not stand against me as witness in front of the lords, do not say against me: "He did really do it", do not make a case against me beside the great god, Hail to you, my heart, hail to you my heart, hail to you my entrails.
The text of the spell abruptly ends, due to a lack of space. This is a very common phenomenon on heart scarabs, very few of them carry the complete text of the spell. However, for an Egyptian this did not mean that he had incomplete or only partial protection. The ancients believed in the principle of representation, comparable to the concept of pars pro toto; this can be seen on funerary papyri, but also on the walls of sarcophagi and tombs. Lack of space and/or finances often forced Egyptians to shorten texts and make a selection, recording only the most important spells and even those only in a fragmentary form. The outcome would be a collection of representative elements, a kind of summary. From the religious viewpoint, such shortened spells and formulas retained their full meaning and magical function and possessed an equal magical power (for the principle, see Niwinski, p. 17-22).
What is most remarkable about this piece is the fact that the expected name of the owner is absent. The text starts with "To be spoken by the Osiris", then leaves an empty space and then continues with "He says".
Funerary objects were often made to order for a specific individual by professional artists (papyri, sarcophagi, shabtis, and other objects like heart scarabs); in that case the name, filiation and titles of the client were incorporated in the text from the start. In other cases pieces were prefabricated in funerary workshops, leaving open spaces for the name of a future buyer to be filled in later, once the object had been purchased. Such objects were offered for the clients' choice in what must have been the equivalent of a modern showroom (Niwinski (1989), p. 18; Kockelmann (2017), p. 72-73).
Once bought, the object would be inscribed with the name of the owner, sometimes by the same scribe who wrote the rest of the text, but sometimes also by another scribe: a different handwriting and/or a different tone of ink can occasionally be seen, for example on the wooden anthropoid coffin of Taiuy (British Museum, inv. no. EA54350), on the famous Book of the Dead papyrus of Ani (British Museum, inv. no. EA10470,4; Goelet (1998), p. 142), where even a misspelling of the name occurred, on the papyrus for Irtyuru (pMilbank, Oriental Institute Museum, inv. no. E10486, Scalf (2017), p. 246-301, catalog no. 15) or on a heart scarab (Oriental Institute Museum, inv. no. E15020; Scalf (2017), p. 185, catalog no. 7). It should be noted that a different handwriting can also indicate reuse (compare Cooney (2018); Kockelmann (2017), p. 68).
Another interesting example is a heart scarab which instead of the name contains the words: "To whom is said: So-and-so". This might imply that the name of the owner was unknown to the person who made the scarab, but also that this scarab was a template for the production of other specimens, on which "So-and-so" had to be replaced by the buyer's name (Oriental Institute Museum, inv. no. E17478; Scalf (2017), p. 190, catalog no. 9).
In very rare cases objects have surfaced which still have open spaces for the name; perhaps these were never bought by a client, but more likely is that after the sale the scribe forgot - or didn't bother - to add the name; after all, not many ancient Egyptians would have discovered this, since most were unable to read.
For examples were the name was never filled in see the papyrus of Iufankh in the Turin Museum (Kockelmann (2017), p. 73), the master copy for the papyrus of Ankhesenmut in Cairo (Biesbroek (1993), p. 37-40; 139), and a heart scarab (Scalf (2017), p. 184, catalog no. 6).
Background information:
The ancient Egyptians did not only wear amulets to protect them against dangers in their lifetime, they also used amulets to ward off dangers in life after death (which after all was considered a continuation of their life on earth, in a different form). To this effect amulets, such as the wedjat-eye, were placed within mummy bandages. A special category was the so-called heart scarab, which was usually positioned close to the physical heart, on the left side of the chest, or sometimes mounted in a pectoral and hung around the neck (Scalf (2017), p. 183); the practice is known since the 13th dynasty. The heart scarab combined two powerful thoughts.
The scarab was associated with the daily rebirth of the young god Khepri, "he who comes into being" (which is what his name means), so the morning sun. His name was written with the sign of a beetle (kheper in Egyptian). The Egyptians observed that this beetle rolls dung into balls (which are used as a source for food or as brooding chambers). They saw a parallel with the sun disk, travelling across the sky and through the underworld, more specifically being carried through the underworld and being pushed above the horizon by Khepri. Scenes of Khepri in this context can be found in the last hours of the Amduat (a composition of texts and images illustrating the nocturnal journey of the sun), where he is ready to pass the border of the underworld at the end of the twelfth hour. But the Egyptians also noticed that some scarab beetles live in dung; seeing the animal coming out of it again reminded them of the sun coming out of the earth spontaneously.
At the same time, the heart scarab provided protection at one of the most dangerous moments after death. The Egyptians believed that each person would be judged in the hereafter. Book of the Dead spell 125 contains an account of what happened during the judgement. In the presence of 42 judges, one for each nome of Egypt, the deceased would speak a text called the "negative confession", stating that he did not commit a variety of sins (with an emphasis on anti-social conduct). The spell is usually accompanied by a vignette showing the heart (not only the center of life but also the seat of thought, so of intelligence, memory, and moral values) being weighed against a figure of the goddess Ma'at or her symbol, a feather; Ma'at was the embodiment of truth, justice, righteousness and order. Anubis is present, adjusting the scales, and Thoth records the verdict. Next to the balance the monster Ammut ("Devouress") is waiting, part hippopotamus, part crocodile, and part lioness. If the deceased would fail the test, Ammut would devour the heart, or in some variants the whole deceased, which meant the "second death" or complete annihilation (Andrews (1994), p. 56-59; Pinch (1994), p. 34; 155-156).
It is during this process that the heart scarab was supposed to provide magical protection. In the Book of the Dead one can find two spells ensuring that the heart will not offer negative testimony against its owner. In spell 27 the deceased says: "My heart belongs to me, for I have power over it. It will not tell what I have done" (Scalf (2017), p. 183). And in spell 30 (with variant texts in spell 30A-B) the heart is addressed and given instructions about how not to testify against the deceased. In a postscript the indication is given that the spell is to be spoken over a scarab amulet, which must be made of green stone (nemehef in Egyptian, which so far has not been identified with certainty), anointed with oil, ritually activated, and put in "the place of a man's heart" (which does not imply that it replaced the real heart in the mummy). To make the magic even stronger, the heart scarab could be inscribed with this spell, or part of it.
Bibliography:
Carol Andrews, Amulets of Ancient Egypt (London, British Museum Press, 1994);
Alexander Biesbroek, De spreuk voor de hoofdsteun. Spreuk 166 van het Oudegyptische Dodenboek (Utrecht, 1993);
Kathlyn M. Cooney, "Coffin Reuse in Dynasty 21. A Case Study of the Coffins in the British Museum", in John H. Taylor - Marie Vandenbeusch (eds.), Ancient Egyptian Coffins. Craft Traditions and Functionality (British Museum Publications on Egypt and Sudan, 4) (Leuven, Peeters Publishers, 2018);
Ogden Goelet, Jr., "A Commentary on the Corpus of Literature and Tradition Which Constitutes The Book of Going Forth by Day", in Eva Von Dassow (ed.), The Egyptian Book of the Dead. The Book of Going Forth by Day. The Complete Papyrus of Ani Featuring Integrated Text and Full-Color Images. Translated by Dr. Raymond O. Faulkner, Additional Translations and a Commentary by Dr. Ogden Goelet, Jr. (San Francisco, Chronicle Books, 1994, second revised edition 1998);
Holger Kockelmann, "How a Book of the Dead Manuscript Was Produced", in Foy D. Scalf (ed.), Book of the Dead. Becoming God in Ancient Egypt (Oriental Institute Museum Publications, 39) (Chicago, Oriental Institute, 2017), p. 67-74;
Michel Malaise, Les scarabées de coeur dans l'Égypte ancienne. Avec un appendice sur les scarabées de cœur des Musées Royaux d'Art et d'Histoire de Bruxelles (Monographies Reine Elisabeth, 4) (Bruxelles, Fondation Egyptologique Reine Elisabeth, 1978);
Andrzej Niwinski, Studies on the Illustrated Theban Funerary Papyri of the 11th and 10th Centuries B.C. (Orbis biblicus et orientalis, 86) (Freiburg, Switzerland, Universitätsverlag - Göttingen, Germany, Vandenhoeck Ruprecht, 1989);
Geraldine Pinch, Magic in Ancient Egypt (London, British Museum Press, 1994);
Foy D. Scalf a.o., "Heart Scarabs", in Foy Scalf (ed.), Book of the Dead. Becoming God in Ancient Egypt (Oriental Institute Museum Publications, 39) (Chicago, Oriental Institute, 2017), p. 183-190;
Marie-Paule Vanlathem, "Scarabées de cœur in situ", Chronique d'Egypte, 76 (2001), p. 48-56.
Dating:
New Kingdom, 18th - 20th dynasty, circa 1550 to 1070 B.C.
Size:
Length 4.8 cm, width 3.5 cm, height 2.2 cm.
Provenance:
Canadian private collection of Richard C. Lambert, acquired in Egypt in 1894-1896; thence by descent; the whole Lambert collection of 121 objects was examined in 1982 by the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, Canada; an illustrated list of all 121 objects was made later; in this list the heart scarab carries the number 112.
Condition:
A few very minor chips to the lower periphery, with softening to some finer details along the topside, otherwise intact and excellent, with a fantastic surface smoothness throughout and great preservation to the inscribed hieroglyphs. Superb, very attractive and rare!
Price:
€ 12,500
Stock number:
E1336