Giant sculpture of a scarab beetle, From Istanbul, modern Turkey, Egyptian, perhaps Ptolemaic
period, 332-30 BC, British Museum.
Colossal scarab as incarnation of Khepri, one of the forms of the sun god. Although
brought from Constantinople it probably stood until Roman times in a court of the temple of Re at Heliopolis or else in
the temple of another god defining the area devoted to the sun-cult.
The scarab beetle (Scarabeus sacer) is one of the enduring symbols of ancient Egypt, representing rebirth and
associated with the rising sun. This diorite sculpture, at around one and a half metres long, is one of the largest representations
known. It would presumably have originally stood in a temple. It is said to be Ptolemaic (305-30 BC), and may have been
taken to Constantinople (modern Istanbul), when Constantinople was the capital of the later Roman Empire (from AD 330).
There is another large scarab near the Sacred Lake in the Temple of Karnak; it originally came from the mortuary temple
of Amenhotep III (1390-1352 BC).
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