King Tutankhamun's beautiful art treasures

Like other pharaohs, Tutankhamun was buried with all his funerary objects and personal possessions, densely packed in the limited space. Luckily most of the burial goods remained intact. In 1922 when British archaeologist Ho­w­ard Carter entered the intact tomb of King Tutan­kh­amun (c1332–23 BC), his eyes eventually fell on heaps of luxury objects that had been intended to take the boy king into the next world.

King Tutankhamun scarab necklace.
gold, carnelian, lapis lazuli, turquoise, feldspar

My favourite treasure from Tutank­hamun’s Tomb is in the Cairo Museum, a stunning gold inlay necklace and scarab pendant, a pectoral (on the chest) with suspen­sion chains and cl­asp. This pect­oral of the rising sun on the horizon was one of the fin­est of King Tut’s many pectorals. It had a large lapis lazuli sc­arab in the cen­tre, flanked by two rearing cobras. The scarab, stand­ing on a solar boat, was push­ing a carnelian disk representing the rising sun, and was fl­anked by symbols of stab­ility, long life and beauty.

Each strap had a bead border on either side, the plaques being at­t­ached by means of four strand bead-work at back passed through fixed eyelets on the plaques. The straps terminated with curved gold elem­ents carrying cloissonné vultures, the embodiment of Goddess Nekhbet, prot­ector of the king as ruler of Upper Egypt.

The Pectoral in the Form of a Winged Scarab was another part of the Howard Carter cache, discovered in a box inlaid with ebony and iv­ory. This pectoral features a series of icono­graphical elements of great symbolic value, such as the scarab rend­ered in lapis lazuli. This beautiful winged scarab pectoral illustrates the throne name of King Tutan­khamun. The central element is the scarab Sun God Khepri made of a fine piece of lapis lazuli, and three strokes of plural sign in hier­oglyphs below it. Between the forelegs of the scarab, the ri­s­­en Sun God Re was depicted, i.e the god of the rising sun. It is made of a clear red carnelian set in gold, which represents what, in nature, was the ball of mud and dung cont­aining its eggs that was rolled forward by the beetle. Beneath the plural strokes sign in hieroglyphs is a basket shape Neb inlaid with turquoise. They sweep round to form a circle around the royal name, offering it divine protection.

Pectoral in the Form of a Winged Scarab
Cairo Antiquity Museum

Thank you to Charlotte Davis for research on scarabs. Scarabs were modelled after male Dung Beetles who were known for rolling up animal dung into a ball and rolling. When they gather­ed enough to form a large sphere, they then buried it underground as a food supply for their larvae. Egyp­t­ians believed that the beetle’s dung ball represented the globe which the beetle kept on revolving. The sc­arab beetle’s revolving ball came to represent the eternal cyc­le of life, a symbol of bir­th, life, dea­th and resurrection. Since the sun was believed to die each night and reborn each morning, the scarab took on signif­icant regenerative pow­ers. The deceased needed to harn­ess these pow­ers to move into the afterlife.

In time, the objects showed more div­er­sity in material and crafts­manship. Scarabs were now often produced in faience, with gems­tones like turquoise, am­ethyst, green and red jasper, lapis lazuli. Thus they began to circulate as decorative objects dur­ing the Middle and Late Kingdoms. They were often used as jewellery eg necklaces, rings, tiaras, bracelets and earrings. And as furniture decorat­ion. During the New King­dom, scarabs were used to provide protection and luck.

Some of the pectoral funerary Egyptian scarabs featured birds’ wings to ensure rebirth of the deceased and a peaceful flight into the afterlife. And note Khepri was sometimes shown with bird’s wings.

The scarab was one of the most well-recognised symbols of death, birth and rebirth in Ancient Egypt, and protection in the afterlife. It appeared as amul­ets, on jewel­lery and in funerary contexts. Mod­el­led after the dung beetle, the scarab was closely connected with the Sun God Khepri, who presided over the sun and the ren­ew­al of life. The sc­arab beetle was also associated with the gods At­um and Re, who repr­es­ented primordial creation and the sun, respect­ively. Or the joint power of the sun and creation. 

Winged scarab of Tutankhamun with semi-precious stones.
?date, Wiki

By the New Kingdom era (1550-1070 BC), scarabs had gained signif­ic­ant religious importance and were inscribed with the names of gods. In fact Pharaohs used scarabs to specifically link themselves with div­init­ies. Most not­ably Amenhotep III (1390-52 BC) produced rich gl­azed faience scar­abs during his reign to commemorate his first year on the throne.