A very large number of scarabs have been found which are made of composition material, or cut out of a piece of stone and left uncoloured. These fetch very small prices, although they may be the genuine articles, therefore the up-river men have taken to re-glazing them. They obtain pieces of old glaze from the ushebti figures and pieces of old glass and melt these down. But the re-glazed scarabs can usually be detected, even although the colour may be correct, by the irregularity of the glazing, and the fact that between the legs of the beetle the dirt can usually be seen under the glaze.
Sometimes the makers grind up these poor and broken scarabs and remould them. Then they re-glaze them, and swear to you by Allah that they are indeed old.
The natives oil antiquities to make them look polished or to enhance the colour. This method the forgers are applying now to their productions.
There is a man at Qus who is a most clever forger of gold jewellery, but he also does a good deal of work recutting scarabs. His procedure is to grind the inscription off the base of the original scarab, recut the cartouche, and re-glaze it. The scarabs can be detected by the thinness of the base plate, and by the peculiar manner in which the hawks are made, with a hump on the back, like the Mut vulture.
Most of the spurious scarabs were, until a year or two ago, made at Luxor, where one man in particular is an artist at the work. I have known him ask 8s. for one which he had just finished, and obstinately refuse to take less. “I am not like the fellaheen, who work for five piastres a day,” he declared. “I do good work, and am going to be paid for it.” He did not see any harm in what he was doing, nor did he try to keep his business secret, and he took a pride in turning out work which was very difficult to tell from the original.
It is curious in what out-of-the-way places these scarabs turn up. Recently, in a consulting-room in Harley Street, one was put before me and my opinion asked. It had been given to the physician by a grateful patient. I did not answer, but after a good look laid it down. “I thought so,” said the doctor quietly, as he picked it up and slipped it into a drawer.
One of the most remarkable features of scarab buying is the number of people who will avoid respectable shops where the proprietors have a reputation to lose, on the score that they are too dear, and then pick up with some boy in the street who has a glib tongue and a plausible manner, and who brings out the inevitable tin box with a motley assortment of worthless odds and ends. Once let such a boy get an inkling of the fact that you mean to buy, and he will be back next day with a fresh lot of good-looking antīcas. Where they come from is a mystery, but I suspect that there is a system of interchange between these men, and that they sell for one another and settle up afterwards.
I remember a lady who scornfully declined to buy from a respectable shop, and then found a boy who told her a long story of how he dug antīcas up and sold them cheaper than other people. I know that she bought nearly £50 worth from him, but how much more I never heard. Later on, the buyer will to a certainty get a rude shock over some of her cherished possessions.
Amulets, or wishing scarabs, are frequently to be bought. The frauds can, as a rule, be told by their light weight and velvety feel, and by the crudeness of the work; but this last is not invariable, and every year the scarab forgers are producing a better article.
Walking along the river-front at Luxor one day, I was accosted by an old man who produced a rag in which was tied up a piece of old broken pottery. This was the lure, for upon my refusing to buy it, he took out a small object rolled up in pink paper. This turned out to be a fine specimen of a walking scarab. The colour was good, and the inscriptions were very fair, while the undercutting was extremely good.