Green stone Heart scarab with human head found on Sai Island in the Pharaonic Cemetery - New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty - Sudan Exhibition, British Museum.

Human-headed, heart scarab in dark green hard stone. On the back the elytrous and prothorax are modelled in low relief. The head, sculpted in the round, represents a face with heavy features, surrounded by a short wig. The mixed form of this funerary amulet - the simple scarab and the ba-bird with human head - is one of the multiple aspects taken by the so-called 'heart scarab'. All of them served the same function, revealed by the presence of the text of Chapter 30B of the Book of the Dead on similar inscribed objects. The present item is uninscribed. It was found in a subsidiary room of the tomb, on the chest of an aged man whose funerary equipment included an inscribed shabti bearing his name, a little scarab with royal iconography and a ring. Its position, higher than the associated bones, suggests that the amulet was placed above the coffin and not inside, as was usually the case.

Such human-headed heart scarabs are uncommon. A few others have been discovered in the same necropolis of Sai, as well as in the New Kingdom cemetery of Aniba in Lower Nubia. All of them belong to the 18th Dynasty.