The Scarab and Scaraboid Seals in the Egyptian Collection of the Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo

Stephanie Müller

doi:10.5617/clara.8701

Abstract

The Museum of Cultural History in Oslo is home to a small but fine ancient Egyptian collection. For my Magister thesis at the University of Heidelberg, I had the pleasure of conducting research on the 98 scarabs and scaraboid seals in the collection. The study focused on the bottom motifs and the multifunctional purposes for their owners as well as the important insights they provide into common religious beliefs in ancient Egyptian society. This short overview of the research conducted in Oslo presents all twelve attested bottom motifs and introduces the most remarkable objects in the collection. Covering a time span from the Twelfth Dynasty until the Late Period and most probably the Roman Period, the scarabs and scaraboid seals in the museum bear testimony to 2000 years of cultural history, providing fascinating details about the religious beliefs of the common people as well as demonstrating the importance of these objects in everyday life.

Highlights

Ancient Egyptian scarabs have always evoked wonder and fascination, as hundreds of thousands of these little objects were produced for a period of around 2000 years. 1 despite being one of the most abundant types of artefact remaining from ancient Egypt, they remain largely neglected in studies relating to ancient Egyptian culture
The study focused on the bottom motifs and the multifunctional purposes for their owners as well as the important insights they provide into common religious beliefs in ancient Egyptian society
There are 98 scarabs and scaraboid seals dating from the Twelfth Dynasty until the Late Period and most probably the Roman Period in the collection of the Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo (MCH)

Summary

Overview of the twelve represented bottom motif classes

Geometric patterns Seven objects could be assigned to the class ‘geometric pattern’, which includes bottom designs with scroll borders, concentric circles, spirals and cross patterns.[5]. Murray and biblical scholar Alviero Niccacci interpreted the sequence as ‘name of Ra’, which were used as amulets for magical protection.[32] Hornung and Staehelin suggested a connection with the name of Ra, but only for those objects with the full written anra sequence, or an association with the word rn, ‘name’, or with the word nr, ‘scare’.33 Both believed that the formula could be one of the ‘abracadabra’ magical words that existed in later Egyptian magical texts.[34] Richards is convinced that the anra sequence displayed the name of the Ugarit god El, which she tried to prove by using the Egyptian group writing or syllabic orthography to spell the Semitic letter ‘l’ by the combination of the signs n + r.35. The throne name of Sety II, Wsr-ḫprw-Ra, is inscribed on the bottom of scarab C47176 (Fig. 10), whose size (38 mm length x 28 mm width x 18 mm height) is distinctly bigger than the majority of the scarabs in the MCH. The motif of two feathered cartouches, the writing of the throne name in a cartouche, as well as the size might indicate an administrative usage of scarab C47176 as a royal seal.[59]

Gods and mythical figures

Conclusion