[114.] Paraph. from Fosbroke’s Encycl. of Antiq., i. 208.

[115.] Of those deposited in the British Museum, Mr. Birch has made the following report:

  1. A Scarabæus having on the base Ra-men-Chepr, a prenomen of Thothmes III. Beneath is a Scarab between two feathers, placed on the basket sub.
  2. A Scarabæus in dark steaschist, with the figure of the sphinx (the sun), and an emblem between the fore paws of the monster. The sphinx constantly appears on the Scarabæi of Thothmes III., and it is probably to this monarch that the one here described belongs. (On many Scarabæi in the British Museum, and on those figured by Klaproth from the Palin Collection, in Leeman’s Monuments, and in the “Description de l’Egypt,” Thothmes is represented as a sphinx treading foreign prisoners under him.—Layard.) After the Sphinx on this Scarab are the titles of the king, “The sun-placer of creation,” of Thothmes III.
  3. Small Scarabæus of white steaschist, with a brownish hue; reads Neter nefer nebta Ra-neb-ma, “The good God, the Lord of the Earth, the Sun, the Lord of truth, rising in all lands.” This is Amenophis III., one of the last kings of the XVIII. dynasty, who flourished about the fifteenth century B.C.
  4. Scarabæus in white steaschist, with an abridged form of the prenomen of Thothmes III., Ra-men-cheper at en Amen, “The sun-placer of creation, the type of Ammon.” This monarch was the greatest monarch of the XVIII. dynasty, and conquered Naharaina and the Saenkar, besides receiving tribute from Babel or Babylon and Assyria.
  5. Scarabæus in pale white steaschist, with three emblems that cannot well be explained. They are the sun’s disk, the ostrich feather, the uræus, and the guitar nablium. They may mean “Truth the good goddess,” or “lady,” or ma-nefer, “good and true.”
  6. Scarabæus in the same substance, with a motto of doubtful meaning.
  7. Scarabæus, with a hawk, and God holding the emblem of life, and the words ma nefer, “good and true.” The meaning very doubtful.
  8. A Scarabæus with a hawk-headed gryphon, emblem of Menta-Ra, or Mars. Behind the monster is the goddess Sati, or Nuben. The hawk-headed lion is one of the shapes into which the sun turns himself in the hours of the day. It is a common emblem of the Aramæan religion.
  9. Scarabæus with hawk-headed gryphon, having before in the uræus and the nabla or guitar, hieroglyphic of good. Above it are the hieroglyphics “Lord of the earth.”
  10. Small Scarabæus in dark steaschist, with a man in adoration to a king or deity, wearing a crown of the upper country, and holding in the left hand a lotus flower. Between this is the emblem of life.
  11. Scarabæus, with the hawk-headed Scarabæus, emblem of Ra-cheper, “the creator Sun,” flying with expanded wings, four in number, which do not appear in Egyptian mythology till after the time of the Persians, when the gods assume a more Pantheistic form. Such a representation of the sun, for instance, is found in the Torso Borghese.

It will be observed, adds Layard, that most of the Egyptian relics discovered in the Assyrian ruins are of the time of the XVIII. Egyptian dynasty, or of the fifteenth century before Christ; a period when, as we learn from Egyptian monuments, there was a close connection between Assyria and Egypt.—Layard’s Babylon and Nineveh, p. 239–240.

[116.] Layard’s Babylon and Nineveh, p. 157, 166.

[117.] Hist. of Mum., 53–5; Wilkin. Anct. Egypt., ii. (2d S.) 261, note.

[118.] Wilkin. Anct. Egypt., ii. (2d S.) 156.

[119.] Pliny, Nat. Hist., xxx. 11; Holland, ii. 395. K.

[120.] Phil. Trans. Abridg., ii. 785; Gent. Mag., xix. 264–5.

[121.] Phil. Trans. Abridg., ix. 11. Concerning the worship of animals in general by the Egyptians, the following remarks in a note may not be inappropriate, as they embrace the worship of the Scarabæus.