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SCARABS.

THE
HISTORY, MANUFACTURE AND RELIGIOUS
SYMBOLISM

OF THE

SCARABAEUS,

IN

ANCIENT EGYPT, PHOENICIA, SARDINIA,
ETRURIA, ETC.

ALSO

REMARKS ON THE LEARNING, PHILOSOPHY, ARTS, ETHICS,
PSYCHOLOGY, IDEAS AS TO THE IMMORTALITY OF
THE SOUL, ETC., OF THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS,
PHOENICIANS, ETC.

BY

ISAAC MYER, LL.B.

Member of the American Oriental Society. The American Numismatic
and Archaeological Society. The Numismatic and Antiquarian
Society of Philadelphia. La Societe Royale de Numismatique
de Belgique. The Oriental Club of
Philadelphia. The New York Historical
Society Historical Society of
the State of Pennsylvania,
etc.

AUTHOR OF THE QABBALAH. THE PHILOSOPHICAL WRITINGS OF
SOLOMON B. YEHUDAH IBN. GEBIROL, OR AVICEBRON;
THE WATERLOO MEDAL, ETC.

FOR SALE BY

EDWIN W. DAYTON,
NO. 641 MADISON AVENUE,
NEW YORK.

OTTO HARRASSOWITZ,
Querstrasse No. 14,
LEIPZIG.

EMILE BOUILLON,
No. 67, Rue de Richelieu,
PARIS.

1894.




Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1894, by
ISAAC MYER,
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.


ALL RIGHTS OF TRANSLATION RESERVED.




INTRODUCTION.


The following work is taken in part, from an address delivered by me
before, The American Numismatic and Archaeological Society, at its Hall
in the City of New York, on March 30th, 1893. Since that time I have
been led into a train of thought, having as its basis a more
philosophical treatment of the meaning of the scarabaeus as a symbol,
in the religious metaphysic conception of it by the Ancient Egyptians,
and have added much new matter. I am convinced that at the period when
we first meet with the symbol of the scarabaeus in Egypt, it was
already the symbol and tangible expression of an elevated religious
idea, embracing that of a future life of the human soul, a
resurrection of it from the dead, and most likely, of a reward or
punishment to it in the future life, based on its conduct when in the
terrestrial life.

We know from the inscription on the lid of the coffin of Men-kau-Ra,
king of the IVth, the Memphite Dynasty, (_circa_ 3633-3600 B.C.,) and
builder of the Third Pyramid at Gizeh; that some of the most elevated
conceptions of the _Per-em-hru_, i.e., the so-called, Book of the
Dead, were at that time in existence as accepted facts. The dead one
at this early period became an Osiris, living eternally. We have every
reason to think, that the use of the models of the scarabaeus as the
symbol of the resurrection or new-birth, and the future eternal life
of the triumphant or justified dead, existed as an accepted dogma,
before the earliest historical knowledge we have thus far been able
to acquire of the Ancient Egyptians.

It most probably ante-dated the epoch of Mena, the first historical
Egyptian king. How long before his period it existed, in the present
condition of our knowledge of the ancient history and thought of
Egypt, it is impossible to surmise. Of the aborigines of the land of
Egypt we do not know nor are we very likely to know, anything. Of the
race known to us as the Egyptian we can now assert with much
certainty, that it was a Caucasian people, and likely came from an
original home in Asia. When the invader arrived in the valley of the
Nile, he appears to have been highly civilized and to have had an
elevated form of religious belief.

The oldest stelae known, one of which is now in the Ashmolean Museum at
Oxford, England, and the other in the Museum at Gizeh, Egypt; were
made for the tomb of Shera, who is called on them, "a prophet"