what are scarabs used for?

Question

pharaohs

Answer 1

Scarabs came to symbolize rebirth and regeneration in ancient Egypt and the newly rise sun was often depicted or compared to a scarab beetle rolling a ball of dung across the horizon.

As a piece of material culture, scarab shaped objects were made in a variety of sizes and materials for various purposes. They were very popular as seals. The top portion of the seal was shaped like a scarab beetle and the bottom portion was flat and carved either with a brief text, often a title and/or name or with an abstract design. Used as a seal, the scarab was often strung on a a bracelet or necklace or mounted on a ring. The flat underside was carved and could be impressed into wet clay to leave a mark, thus sealing a container or packet.

Scarabs were also popular as jewelrey elements (beads) and were widely immitated by Egypt's neighbors, especially in the area of the Levant.

The first scarabs appear near the end of the First Intermediate Period and the flat under-portion was not inscribed with actual text until late in the Middle Kingdom.

Very large scarabs with a formal text inscribed on the bottom were issued to commemorate significant events, such as the marriage of Amenhotep III to Tiye.

Scarabs were also used as protective amulets, and were often included as part of the set of amulets wrapped with a mummy. Usually such scarabs were placed over the heart and contain a particular spell from the so-called "Book of the Dead" - Spell 30.

Mye's answer below, cut and pasted entirely from the wikipedia entry for scarab beetles is also a useful source of information.

Answer 2

According to some beliefs to wear one protected from snakebite and in mythology a great Sun Scarab rolled the sun across the sky.

Answer 3

The scarab, or dung beetle, is a symbol of eternal life. It is worn as a pendant or drawn on pictures. A talisman. It was as sacred to the ancient egyptians as the cross is to Christians in the current era.

Answer 4

They gather up all the camel dung and roll it into balls and bury it in burrows with their eggs. They keep Egypt somewhat cleaner than the average septic tank.
In a religious venue, because of their industrious habits and curious life-cycle, they are symbols of re-incarnation. Buried camel dung balls that turn into beautiful colorful beetles - wow! If you didn't know about those itty-bitty scarab eggs in all that dung, you'd think it was magic, wouldn't you?
Scarabs are holy dung beetles. If you want to seem cool, they are available on-line from a number of sources. In Cairo, the vendors make them from cheap terra-cotta and feed them to geese, whose digestive processes "distress" them. Once through the goose makes a scarab made yesterday look 10,000 years old.
Cheers.

Answer 5

In ancient Egypt, they were both respected and used as a hierogliphic representing new life. Scarabs(a.k.a. dung beetles) were somehow thought of some sort of native insect. Not much is known about that.....

Answer 6

Sith Rules is absolutely correct, I follow the Egyptian Religion too...

Answer 7

Several species of the dung beetle, most notably the Scarabaeus sacer (often referred to as scarab), enjoyed a sacred status among the ancient Egyptians. The people's practice of making a mummy could be inspired by the brooding process of the beetle.

The hieroglyphic image of the beetle represents a trilateral phonetic that Egyptologists transliterate as xpr or ḫpr and translate as "to come into being", "to become" or "to transform". The derivative term xprw or ḫpr(w) is variously translated as "form", "transformation", "happening", "mode of being" or "what has come into being", depending on the context. It may have existential, fictional, or ontologic significance.

The scarab was linked to Khepri ("he who has come into being"), the god of the setting sun. The ancients believed that the dung beetle was only male in gender, and reproduced by depositing semen into a dung ball. The supposed self-creation of the beetle resembles that of Khepri, who creates himself out of nothing. Moreover, the dung ball rolled by a dung beetle resembles the sun. As Plutarch wrote in his essay "Isis and Osiris" (collected in his Moralia): "The race of beetles has no female, but all the males eject their sperm into a round pellet of material which they roll up by pushing it from the opposite side, just as the sun seems to turn the heavens in the direction opposite to its own course, which is from west to east."

The ancient Egyptians believed that Khepri renewed the sun every day before rolling it above the horizon, then carried it through the other world after sunset, only to renew it, again, the next day. Some New Kingdom royal tombs exhibit a threefold image of the sun god, with the beetle as symbol of the morning sun. The astronomical ceiling in the tomb of Ramses VI portrays the nightly "death" and "rebirth" of the sun as being swallowed by Nut, goddess of the sky, and re-emerging from her womb as Khepri.

The image of the scarab, conveying ideas of transformation, renewal, and resurrection, is ubiquitous in ancient Egyptian religious and funerary art.

Excavations of ancient Egyptian sites have yielded images of the scarab in bone, ivory, stone, Egyptian faience, and precious metals, dating from the Sixth Dynasty and up to the period of Roman rule. They are generally small, bored to allow stringing on a necklace, and the base bears a brief inscription or cartouche. Some have been used as seals. Pharaohs sometimes commissioned the manufacture of larger images with lengthy inscriptions, such as the commemorative scarab of Queen Tiye. Massive sculptures of scarabs can be seen at Luxor Temple, at the Serapeum in Alexandria and elsewhere in Egypt.

The scarab was of prime significance in the funerary cult of ancient Egypt. Scarabs, generally, though not always, were cut from green stone, and placed on the chest of the deceased. Perhaps the most famous example of such "heart scarabs" is the yellow-green pectoral scarab found among the entombed provisions of Tutankhamen. It was carved from a large piece of Libyan desert glass. The purpose of the "heart scarab" was to ensure that the heart would not bear witness against the deceased at judgement in the Afterlife. Other possibilities are suggested by the "transformation spells" of the Coffin Texts, which affirm that the soul of the deceased may transform (xpr) into a human being, a god, or a bird and reappear in the world of the living.

One scholar comments on other traits of the scarab connected with the theme of death and rebirth: "It may not have gone unnoticed that the pupa, whose wings and legs are encased at this stage of development, is very mummy-like. It has even been pointed out that the egg-bearing ball of dung is created in an underground chamber which is reached by a vertical shaft and horizontal passage curiously reminiscent of Old Kingdom mastaba tombs." (Andrews, Amulets of Ancient Egypt, p. 51.)

In contrast to funerary contexts, some of ancient Egypt's neighbors adopted the scarab motif for seals. The best-known of these being Judean LMLK seals (8 of 21 designs contained scarab beetles), which were used exclusively to stamp impressions on storage jars during the reign of Hezekiah.

The scarab remains an item of popular interest thanks to modern fascination with the art and beliefs of ancient Egypt. Scarab beads in semiprecious stones or glazed ceramics can be purchased at most bead shops, while at Luxor Temple a massive ancient scarab has been roped off to discourage visitors from rubbing the base of the statue "for luck".

Answer 8

They're a symbol of rebirth. You can smash them all, but they will always come back.

Answer 9

to protect from eviL spirits

Answer 10

They're good in a stew.