BEETLE OF THE GODS

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Massive hinged gold hoop-shaped bracelet found on the mummy of Tutankhamun.



Its central plaque bears a large gold scarab inlaid with lapis lazuli.

All the floral and block-decoration is inlaid with lapis lazuli, turquoise,
 
cornelian and quartz in colored cement.



From the tomb of Tutankhamun,
Valley of the Kings, W. Thebes.

18th Dynasty (1334-1325 B.C.)

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Among examples of Egyptian jewelry is the pectoral that the ancient priests placed on the breast of Tutankhamen.

The chalcedony scarab in the middle of the breastplate was to help the king as he stood at the gates of the other world.

The scarab is Amon, whose outstretched wings bear the soul on its journey.

Protected by the cobra of divinity and the eye of Horus, he is ensured health, fecundity and perspicacity in the other world.

Three lotus flowers scent darkness.

A counterpart to this pectoral is a magnificent ship holding the rising sun; a beetle pushing a vermilion carnelian (the symbol of resurrection) with its claws. Other scarabs, maneuvering other gems, decorate the necklace from which the jewels hang.

 Thanks to the magic of this amulet, all the forces of the other world would recognize Tutankhamen, and he would be able to walk with confidence down the paths of darkness.

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                                                       Three Ornate Rings





Wrapped together in a package, placed above the right wrist of Tutankhamun's mummy, were five rings, three of which are illustrated here.
(Top to bottom)

(a) Particular interest attaches to the material of this ring. It is a green translucent stone, which Carter thought was chalcedony. However, scientific tests carried out by Alfred Lucas, the chemist who assisted Carter in his work at the tomb, proved that neither a steel point nor quartz would mark it and that the stone itself did not scratch glass. He therefore deduced that it was probably nephrite, and not jadeite, as he had once supposed. Nepthrite is not a stone that is known to exist in Egypt or in any country of the Middle East; all the sources at present are located in either Europe or the Far East.. In view of its hardness it is not surprising that the figures are so roughly engraved in the two cartouches that form the bezel.

The king himself, wearing the blue khepresh helmet with streamers and a triangular kilt with apron, is shown in the right-hand cartouche. His throne name, followed by the words "given life", is written in a separate cartouche inside the main cartouche. He stands before the ithyphallic god Min of Coptos, who wears the same kind of plumed headdress as Amun, and holds a flail in his right hand. Beneath the flail is a single blue lotus flower with a long stem.

Min was an ancient god of vegetation and fertility whose cult was suppressed by Akhenaton when he closed the temples of all the gods except Aton. Tutankhamun revived the cult and reinstated its priesthood.

(b) The cartouche-shaped bezel of this ring bears a three-dimensional device. In this respect it is not unique among the rings from this tomb, but it is certainly the most elaborate of the fifteen rings found on the mummy. The central feature is a scarab of either lapis lazuli or blue glass with an atef crown on its head; two uraei with solar disks are mounted near the tips of the horns at the base of the crown. In front of the scarab is the lunar bark bearing the disk of the moon and its crescent. At the back, protecting the scarab with its outspread wings, is the falcon of Horus with sun's disk holding the shen sign in each talon, all in closionne-work; the inlay is of lapis lazuli, feldspar, and carnelian. Supporting the bezel are terminals with floral motifs, each consisting of a papyrus flower flanked by poppy buds, the stems of which form the tripartite loop of the ring. All three stems are made of gold and the two on the outside, which are those of the poppy buds, are inlaid with blue glass. Beneath the gold bezel, on the inner surface of the ring, are engraved the king's throne name and titles and the epithet "beloved of Thoth."

(c) The finely carved scarab that forms the bezel of this ring is made of chalcedony, a stone found in several places in Egypt both east and west of the Nile. Engraved on the base is a figure of the god Thoth, ibis-headed, with a lunar disk and crescent on his head. In his out-stretched left hand he holds an udjat eye and in his right hand he holds the ankh sign. The milky color of the stone is particularly suitable for the moon-god and very probably it was chosen for that reason. Besides being the moon-god, Thoth was also the patron deity of writing, magic, and wisdom, and it was he who restored to Horus the eye that he lost in his fight with Seth, the murderer of his father, Osiris. Although Horus is not represented on this scarab, Thoth's action in holding out the eye is an allusion to its return to Horus in accordance with the legend.

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Royal Splendor
Photograph by
Kenneth Garrett

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC






King Tut took more than 200 magnificently crafted pieces of jewelry to his grave.

Many—including these two bracelets of gold and semiprecious stones—display

the sacred scarab, a symbol of the rising sun and of the king's resurrection in

the afterlife.

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Tut's gem hints at space impact

From:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5196362.stm
July 19, 2006








                                                         Thing of beauty:



                                    Tutankhamun's Pectoral with desert glass scarab





In 1996 in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, Italian mineralogist Vincenzo de Michele spotted an
unusual yellow-green gem in the middle of one of Tutankhamun's necklaces.

The jewel was tested and found to be glass, but intriguingly it is older than the earliest Egyptian
civilisation.

Working with Egyptian geologist Aly Barakat, they traced its origins to unexplained chunks of
glass found scattered in the sand in a remote region of the Sahara Desert.

But the glass is itself a scientific enigma. How did it get to be there and who or what made it?

BBC Horizon programme reports an extraordinary new theory linking Tutankhamun's gem with a
meteor. 

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Close-up of the
"Lybian Glass"
scarab found in
the pectoral of
King Tutankhamen

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Jupiter clue

 

The first atomic bomb detonation, at the Trinity site in New Mexico in 1945, created a thin layer of glass on the sand. But the area of glass in the Egyptian desert is vastly bigger.

Whatever happened in Egypt must have been much more powerful than an atomic bomb.



 
Boslough's specialism is
modelling large impacts





Impact simulation 



A natural airburst of that magnitude was unheard of until, in 1994, scientists watched as comet Shoemaker-Levy collided with Jupiter. It exploded in the Jovian atmosphere, and the Hubble telescope recorded the largest incandescent fireball ever witnessed rising over Jupiter's horizon.

Mark Boslough, who specialises in modelling large impacts on supercomputers, created a simulation of a similar impact on Earth.

The simulation revealed that an impactor could indeed generate a blistering atmospheric fireball, creating surface temperatures of 1,800C, and leaving behind a field of glass.

"What I want to emphasise is that it is hugely bigger in energy than the atomic tests," said Boslough. "Ten thousand times more powerful."

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Defence lessons



The more fragile the incoming object, the more likely these airborne explosions are to happen.

In Southeast Asia, John Wasson has unearthed the remains of an event 800,000 years ago that was even more powerful and damaging than the one in the Egyptian desert; one which produced multiple fireballs and left glass over three hundred thousand square miles, with no sign of a crater.

"Within this region, certainly all of the humans would have been killed. There would be no hope for anything to survive," he said.





Barakat holds up one of the many,
huge chunks of glass in the desert



According to Boslough and Wasson, events similar to Tunguska could happen as frequently as every 100 years, and the effect of even a small airburst would be comparable to many Hiroshima bombs.

Attempting to blow up an incoming asteroid, Hollywood style, could well make things worse by increasing the number of devastating airbursts.

"There are hundreds of times more of these smaller asteroids than there are the big ones the astronomers track," said Mark Boslough. "There will be another impact on the earth. It's just a matter of when."



Horizon: Tutunkhamun's Fireball, made by production company TV6, was broadcast on BBC Two.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5196362.stm




THERE IS MORE ON THIS SUBJECT HERE:


http://atlantisonline.smfforfree2.com/index.php/topic,1929.0.html

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WINGED SCARAB DETAIL
ON SARCOPHAGUS AT

MUSEO EGIZIO,
Turin, Italy

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WINGED SCARAB

MUSEO EGIZIO,
Florence, Italy