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Ancient Egypt, 13th Dynasty
VERY RARE. Depicts a scarab beetle within praises to the Pharaoh
Scarab Beetles in Ancient Egypt
By far the most important amulet in ancient Egypt was the scarab, symbolically as sacred to the Egyptians as the cross is to Christians.
Scarab dung beetles lay eggs in a pellet which they roll along and the Egyptians regarded this action as an image of the sun and its course through the heavens, rolled by a gigantic beetle. Scarabs are associated with the Egyptian god, Khepri. It was Khepri that pushed the sun across the sky. The scarab beetle became an ancient Egyptian symbol for rebirth, the ability to be reborn. Each day the sun disappeared, always to rise again and be reborn the following day.
The god Khepri, which literally means "He who is Coming into Being", was a creator god and a solar deity. He was represented as a scarab or dung beetle, or as a man with a beetle head. The scarab beetle was observed to roll it's eggs in a ball of dung along the ground, and the ball was identified with the sun. The baby beetles were seen to emerge from the primeval mound and so dung beetles were thought capable of spontaneous creation.Scarabs were worn as jewellery and amulets in ancient Egypt.
Pete, for some reason your edit about Vietnam is not showing on the main screen (only if I try to quote you). Anyway, sounds good to me. Either that or a Chinese memorial at the Burma railway, Kanchanaburi.
DM is correct.
When I visited the bridge on Kwai I crossed over to see this humble monument down at ground level.
The plague in english commemorates the death of over 30,000 Chinese who died on the railway and elsewhere in Thailand.
I think the floor is clear to post another asian related question
Who am I?
Born in India
Educated at Eton
Then spent 5 years in Burma
Fought in the Spanish civil war
During WW2 spent time in charge of BBC broadcasting to South-Eastern Asia.
Became a very successful novelist
(Sandman would know immediately so he should be excluded)
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