‘But,’ I may be asked, ‘why should not Horapollo have seen the exact truth? Perhaps the Sacred Beetle of his day had tarsi which the insect no longer possesses. In that case, it has been transformed by the slow work of time.’
I am waiting for some one to show me a natural Scarab of Horapollo’s period before I reply to this objection on the part of the evolutionists. The tombs which so religiously guard the Cat, the Ibis and the Crocodile must also contain the sacred insect. All that I have by me is a few figures showing the Scarab as we find him engraved on the monuments or carved in fine stone as an amulet for the mummies. The ancient artist is remarkably faithful in the execution of the thing as a whole; but his graver and chisel have not troubled about such insignificant details as the tarsi. [[105]]
Poor as I am in documents of this kind, I doubt whether the work of sculptor or engraver will solve the problem. Even if an image with front tarsi were discovered somewhere or other, the question would be no further advanced. It would always be possible to plead a mistake, an oversight, a leaning towards symmetry. The doubt, so long as it prevails in certain minds, can be removed only by the sight of the ancient insect in the natural state. I will wait for it, though convinced beforehand that the Sacred Beetle of the Pharaohs differed in no way from our own.
We will stay a little longer with the old Egyptian author, though his wild allegorical jargon is usually incomprehensible. He is sometimes strikingly accurate in his ideas. Is this due to a chance coincidence? Or is it the result of serious observation? I should be glad to take the latter view, so perfect is the agreement between his statements and certain biological details of which our own science was ignorant until quite lately. Of the home life of the Sacred Beetle Horapollo knew much more than we do. He tells us this in particular:
‘The Scarabæus deposits this ball in the earth for the space of twenty-eight days (for in so many days the moon passes through the twelve signs of the Zodiac). By thus remaining under the moon the race of Scarabæi is endowed with life; and upon the twenty-ninth day, after having opened the ball, it casts it into water, for it is aware that upon that day the conjunction of the moon and sun takes place, as well as the generation of the world. From the ball thus opened, the animals, that is, the Scarabæi, issue forth.’[6]
[[106]]
Let us dismiss the revolution of the moon, the conjunction of the sun and moon, the generation of the world and other astrological absurdities, but remember this, the twenty-eight days of incubation required by the ball underground, the twenty-eight days during which the Scarab is born to life. Let us also remember the indispensable intervention of water to bring the insect out of its burst shell. These are definite facts, falling within the domain of true science. Are they imaginary or real? The question deserves investigation.
The ancients were unacquainted with the wonders of the metamorphosis. To them a larva was a worm born of corruption. The wretched creature had no future to lift it from its abject state: as worm it appeared and as worm it must disappear. It was not a mask whereunder a higher form of life was being elaborated; it was a definite entity, supremely contemptible and doomed soon to return to the putrescence of which it was the offspring.
To the Egyptian author, then, the Scarab’s larva was unknown. And, if by chance he had had before his eyes the insect’s shell inhabited by a fat, pot-bellied grub, he would never have suspected in the foul and ugly animal the sober beauty of the future Scarab. According to the ideas of the time, ideas that were long maintained, the sacred insect had neither father nor mother: an error excusable among the untutored ancients, for here the two sexes are outwardly indistinguishable. It was born of the ordure that formed its ball; and its birth dated from the appearance of the nymph, that amber jewel displaying, in a perfectly recognizable shape, the features of the adult insect.
In the eyes of antiquity the life of the Sacred Beetle began at the moment when he could be recognized, not [[107]]before; for otherwise we should have that as yet unsuspected connecting-link, the grub. The twenty-eight days, therefore, during which, as Horapollo tells us, the offspring of the insect quickens, represent the duration of the nymphal phase. This duration has been the object of special attention in my studies. It varies but never to any great extent. From my notes I find thirty-three days to be the longest period and twenty-one the shortest. The average, supplied by some twenty observations, is twenty-eight days. This very number twenty-eight, this number of days contained in four weeks, actually appears oftener than the others. Horapollo spoke truly: the real insect takes life in the space of a lunar month.