Heart scarabs 2

YOU ARE HERE:>>REAL or FAKE>>Fake Egyptian>>Heart scarabs page 2

John asked about this piece.

12th April 06

From Alex

14th April 06

An interesting piece! The artist put a lot of effort in writing all those hieroglyphs, but unfortunately the text is completely meaningless.

Some combinations of signs, considered isolated, do have a meaning (like "given life" in the first line, "son of Ptah" (3rd line), "High Priest of Amun" (line 4/5) etc.), but in context it is utter nonsense. Some signs are even nonexistent.

Other giveaways are the transposition of signs in Htp (line 3, although sometimes seen in real texts as well), the water line in Amun (line 5) and so on.

Ah, and there is the winged sundisk ... I have the impression that the artist has been copying bits and pieces from another, possibly authentic text, without knowing what he was doing. I would not be surprised if that other text were a magical stela. Anyway, nothing to do with a heart scarab, I am afraid

Adrienne has asked about this one.

14th April 06

The "M" on one side....indicating a museum copy?

But if so, what on earth are the "glyphs" on the back???

From Alex

15th April

Yes, it is a copy, but well done, especially as far as the text on the bottom is concerned. This is indeed the correct text (spell 30B from the Book of the Dead), carefully copied.

Many variant recensions of spell 30B are known, but basically they all follow the same pattern. As often the spell is not complete because the scarab is too small to write it all down.

The text on this one reads as follows (missing - but necessary - words between brackets "()", comment and notes between "[]"):

line 1: [Empty, name of owner expected]

line 2: He says: Oh, my heart of my mother - twice -,

line 3: my heart of my being, do not act as

line 4: opponent [most copies have the word "witness" here instead of opponent], do not be driven away (from) me [adding one small glyph we get the better and more common phrase: "do not create opposition (against) me"] in the council [of the gods],

line 5: do not show enmity (against) me in (the presence of)

line 6: the guardian of the balance. You are my heart which is in

line 7: my body, [difficult to see, but probably:] listen to me. My

line 8: arm has gone out ...

There the text stops because there is no more room. The last words are a (not uncommon) corruption for "who keeps safe my arm; may you go out... etc".

The line of text on the back (or top, if you prefer) is uncommon; difficult to see because of the reflection, but it has "Osiris, the foremost of the west, the great god" plus something near the M (maybe the owner's name).