Scarabs Part 7

[97] The Hebrew _She-kheen-ah_, or Glory?

[98] The Nile. Notes for Travellers in Egypt, by E.A. Wallis Budge, Litt. D., F.S.A., etc., second ed. London, 1892, p. 165 _et seq._

[99] Inscriptions in the pyramid of Pepi I., l. 664 (_circa_ 3233-3200 B.C.,) in the _Recueil de Travaux Relatifs a la Philol., et a l'Arch.

egypt._, etc., Vol. VIII., p. 104.

[100] Comp. The _Per-em-hru_ or, Book of the Dead, edition of Ed.

Naville, ch. XVII., l. 3, 4. In the pa.s.sage cited from Pepi, I. 664 _et seq._, Tumu is also a primordial deity and its female _sakti_ or principle, is Nu or Nut, the sky.

[101] It is from this action that the deity was named Shu from the root, _Shu_ to lift up, to raise. Later, through a pun, he obtained the meaning of Luminous. Comp. also Naville's ed. of the _Per-em-hru_ last cited, l. 4 _et seq._

[102] G. Maspero in the _Revue de l'Hist. des Religions. Le Livre des Morts_, Vol. XV., pp. 269, 270.

[103] Hermes Trismegistos, second ed., by Louis Menard. Paris, 1867.

pp. 27, 28. _Hermetis Trismegisti Poemander; ad fidem codic.u.m manu scriptorum recognovit_, by Gustavus Parthey. Berolini, 1854, p. 31.

The word "sand" is used to symbolize the positive or atomic dryness, and "damp sand," the atomic humidity, or the negative.

[104] Book of the Dead, ch. XVII., l. 1-4; XV., l. 28, 29, 43, 47; LXXIX., l. 1, 2; LXXVIII., l. 12. _Hymne a Ammon-Ra_, by Eugene Grebaut. Paris, 1874, pp. 11, 28, 112, 115, 120-122, 295.

[105] Paul Pierret, _etudes egyptol._, I., 81.

[106] F. Chabas, _l'egyptologie_. Paris, 1878, Vol. II., p. 103.

[107] Comp. Trans. Soc. Biblical Literature, Vol. VI., pp. 494-508.

[108] Comp. Religion of Ancient Egypt by P. Le Page Renouf, p. 153 _et seq._

[109] _Mythe d' Horus_, by E. Naville.

VIII.

FORGERY OF SCARABS IN MODERN TIMES. DIFFICULTY OF DETECTING SUCH. OTHER EGYPTIAN ANTIQUITIES ALSO COUNTERFEITED BY THE PRESENT INHABITANTS OF EGYPT.

M. Prisse says:[110] "Most of the fellahs who inhabit the land, formerly Memphis and Thebes, live only from the products of their finds. Constrained to cease from their lucrative researches, they are reduced to the counterfeiting of figurines, amulets and the other objects of art which they formerly found in the earth. Necessity the mother of industry has caused them in a short time to make wonderful progress. Without any practice in the arts, and with the rudest tools, some of the peasants have carved scarabs and beautiful statuettes and ornamented them with hieroglyphic legends. They very well know that cartouches add much value to the antiquities, and they are never in want of copies of them either from the great monuments or the original scarabs. They use in making the copies a limestone of fine and compact grain, soapstone, serpentine and alabaster. The objects made of limestone are daubed with bitumen taken from the mummies, or from the colors taken away from the paintings in the hypogea, finally some are covered uniformly with a brilliant pottery glaze which renders, it is true, the forms rather blurred and not easy to see, but which resembles in a surprising manner, antiquities which the action of fire or of earth, impregnated with saltpetre, have slightly damaged. The feigned hieroglyphs therein are mistaken for those as to which the work has been neglected. Their statuettes recall the figurines of poor ware, which the Ancient Egyptians placed in so great a number in their tombs. In spite of their imperfections, the fellahs have been perfectly successful in deceiving most of the travelers, generally grossly ignorant of antiquities. Hard stones, such as basalt, green jasper, burnt serpentine, green feldspar, chalcedony, cornelian, etc., upon which the rude tools of the fellahs would not have worked, would have become, for the amateurs in antiquities, the only pieces of authentic origin; but the Jews of Cairo, also as rapacious and more able than the Arabs, have engraved with the wheel, scarabs and amulets denuded of legends; and finally have entirely counterfeited them, so that all these little objects are now very much suspected, and their appreciation to-day, demands understanding of the text much more than knowledge of Egyptian art.

Not only the tourists, the people of leisure from Europe, who bring back from all the cla.s.sic lands some antiquities, in place of observation and study, which are not sold; purchase these falsified antiquities, but also people who pride themselves upon having a knowledge of archaeology, often buy them. Most of the collections of the Museums of Europe contain, more or less, objects fabricated in our day in Egypt. 'Luxor' says M. Mariette, 'is a centre for fabrications in which scarabs, statuettes and even steles, are imitated with an address which often leads astray the most instructed antiquary.'"

Mr. Henry A. Rhind[111] writing in 1862 says: "There is now at Thebes an arch-forger of scarabaei--a certain Ali Gamooni, whose endeavors, in the manufacture of these much sought after relics, have been crowned with the greatest success. * * Scarabaei of elegant and well finished descriptions, are not beyond the range of this curious counterfeiter. These he makes of the same material as the ancients used--a close-grained, easily cut limestone--which, after it is cut into shape and lettered, receives a greenish glaze by being baked on a shovel with bra.s.s filings. Ali not content with closely imitating, has even aspired to the creative; so antiquarians must be on their guard lest they waste their time and learning, on antiquities of a very modern date."[112]

FOOTNOTES:

[110] _Collections d'Antiquites egypt. au Caire_, p. 1 _et seq._

[111] Thebes; its Tombs and their Tenants, ancient and modern. London, 1862.

[112] _Ibid._, pp. 253-255. Comp. Gliddon, Indigenous Races, p. 192 note.

IX.

PHNICIAN SCARABS. MANUFACTURED MOSTLY AS ARTICLE OF TRADE. USED INSCRIBED SCARABS AS SEALS IN COMMERCIAL AND OTHER TRANSACTIONS.

MANY SCARABS FOUND IN SARDINIA.

Archaeologists frequently find in lands bordering on the sh.o.r.es of the Mediterranean sea, scarabs and scarabeoids, on which are engraved subjects which are Egyptian, Chaldean, a.s.syrian, Hitt.i.te or Persian; they were intended apparently to be used as signets, and were incised with short inscriptions in Phnician, and sometimes, in Aramaic or in Hebrew, giving the name of the owner of the signet.

These had been mostly manufactured in their entirety, as articles of trade, for sale by the ancient merchants of Tyre and Sidon, or they were Egyptian, a.s.syrian or other originals upon which, Phnician lapidaries had engraved the name of the later Phnician owner. In spite of not being an artistic people producing works of originality, this people, the great mariners and merchants of antiquity, had in an eminent degree the genius of a.s.similation or adaptation, and manufactured cylinders, cones, spheroids, scarabs and signets of all kinds, at first for themselves, and afterwards as an article of sale to the people with whom they traded.

They also used seals in their commercial and maritime transactions, which they surrounded with the same formalities which we find in a.s.syria, Babylonia and Chaldea. When they dealt with these last mentioned peoples, the Phnicians came into contact with nations, whose most unimportant transactions were put into writing by a scribe, and sealed in the presence of witnesses, with the seal of the contracting parties. They therefore in dealing with these people were obliged to have and use signets.[113][114] Such contracts have been found dating between 745-729 B.C.

In the island of Sardinia have been found numerous intaglios under the form of scarabs, they were apparently used as signets. The under parts are incised with Egyptian, a.s.syro-Chaldean or Persian subjects. In the necropolis of Tharros, an early Phnician colony situated near the present Torre di San Giovanni di Sinis, have been found more than 600 scarabs ornamented with Egyptian, a.s.syrian and Persian subjects;[115]

and one might believe a colony which came from Egypt or a.s.syria settled there. These scarabs are usually cut in dark green jasper, some are made of cornelian, others of a gla.s.s-paste, rarely in amethyst or sardonyx. The work is variable sometimes carefully done, but none of the scarabs have the clearness of those found in Egypt, nor of the a.s.syro-Chaldean of Asia. Most of these scarabs, which are always made in nearly the same form, were mounted, some in gold and others in silver; also sometimes in other metals which the corrosions from age had already caused to disappear when they were found.

These intaglios can be divided from the nature of the subjects into three varieties. The first those imitating the Egyptian; the second, the a.s.syro-Chaldean; and the third, the Persian. All these scarabs are of Phnician manufacture, but they were probably made in Sardinia, as the remains of the workshops and materials used in making them, have been found there. They do not go back of 500 B.C. The Phnicians in their colonies, showed no more originality in their work than they did in the mother country, and have been only the intermediary agents between the civilization of the Orient and that of the Occident. This people even counterfeited Egyptian manufactures and antiquities in order to sell them, and the borrowings in their own religion show, they were governed more by the gains of trade than the desires or depths of piety. There are a number in the Cesnola collection in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

There is a magnificent scarab in green jasper in the British Museum, but where it was produced is not known. It appears to be from the chisel of an Egyptian artist. The base however has been engraved by another; its subject is clearly a.s.syrian, in the style of work done with the drill, by the artists of Calah. In the field of the signet is a symbol unknown to a.s.syria or Egypt, below this is evidently the Egyptian _ankh_ or _crux ansata_ and below this is the inscription: "(Signet) of Hodo, the Scribe." This a beautiful specimen of the intelligent work of the Phnicians.

FOOTNOTES:

[113] Such contracts written on terra cotta, have been found sealed with impressions of the finger nails on the margin of the terra cotta before it was baked; others have had something as to the act done, referred to on the margins, written in Phnician letters. There has been found an example of this as early as 783 B.C.

[114] Menant. _Les Pierres Gravees de la Haute-Asie_, p. 211 _et seq._

[115] Crespi, _Catalogo_, p. 138, No. 1.

X.

ETRUSCAN SCARABS. ORIGIN OF AND WHERE FOUND. COPIED FROM EGYPTIAN BUT WITH CHANGES IN SUBJECTS, SIZE AND ORNAMENTATION.

THE ENGRAVING OF. WHERE USUALLY FOUND. USES BY THE ETRUSCANS.

GREEK AND ROMAN SCARABS. GNOSTIC, OF THE BASILIDIANS.

The archaic people of ancient Etruria did not make cameos, their gems were intaglios and were incised on the under side, on forms shaped in the model of the scarabaeus or beetle. The use of the form therefore was most likely derived from those used in the valley of the Nile. The Etruscan scarabs were however not correct representations; they were conventional and exaggerated resemblances of the insect.

The Etruscan scarabaeus is found in different parts of Italy, quite frequently at Chiusi, in Tuscany, which was formerly ancient Etruria; from whence, the name Etruscan for those found in this part of Italy, has been derived.

They were usually manufactured of common red sard, such as is now often met with in the beds of Italian torrents, but Etruscan scarabs have also been found made of sardonyx, cornelian, onyx and agate, also, but rarely, of chalcedony.

The ancient inhabitants of Italy followed the Egyptian form in making the representation except, that the back and the wing cases of the scarab are set much higher than the Egyptian, and there is usually a raised ridge running along the junction, also the legs are cut out on the side, and a slight difference exists in the ornamentation and engraving of the wing cases. The stones have been rubbed into shape apparently by corundum. Few exceed an inch, and most are not over half an inch in length, whereas the Egyptian were from the size of our ordinary house fly to those a number of feet across. The material of the Etruscan is also always semi-transparent, except those burned which has made the sard opaque. The flat side or base was engraved with intaglio. This engraving though in early examples rude and done with the drill, was in later times, improved by the use of the wheel, diamond dust and the diamond point, and by the polishing of both the surface and the incised parts, and also, by the addition, both at the sides and around the engraved base, of an ornamental border of small strokes following each other closely, resembling in some specimens, the milling of a coin; in others, it is like a widely linked chain or string of beads, or a loosely twisted cable, and in others like the ornamentation known as "egg moulding."