One insect was an important symbol for the ancient Egyptians: the scarab beetle. This blocky wood and resin statue is mounted on a square wooden plinth about 10 centimetres high. The scarab is shaped much like a turtle, and is half a metre long, 25 centimetres wide and about 20 centimetres high. The scarab is dark brown in colour, oval in shape; smooth, but weathered in texture. It sits with its wings folded. Its six legs and front pincers are partly hidden in a mess of sand and dust that has accumulated at the statue’s base.
The statue looks rough, and unpolished. It was broken when found, and the repair has left a pattern of untidy and obvious cracks that cross the beetle’s carapace and divide its back into six irregular shapes.
The scarab’s head is small, about one sixth of the carcass overall. The head is roughly triangular, the base being the top of the face. It has bulbous eyes, and antennae coiled like a ram’s horns. The lower part of the face flattens and narrows into protuberance that is a spatula-like jaw. When found It was among many animal statues in the Saqqara cache, an archaeological dig 20 miles south of Cairo on the Nile’s west bank.
The Scarabaeus sacer is a dung beetle. It rolls and pushes a large ball of dung into its hole to feed its young, which hatch from eggs laid in the dung. In a world where it's a mystery how the sun rises, and how the earth continues on its path, the scarab and its ball of dung make a good symbol for the repetition and creation of life. Like animal mummies, these statues were likely presented as offerings to the gods.