Author's Preface 



Ancient Egypt used to say that the Scarab 

 rolls his ball from east to west, the direction 

 in which the world turns. He next buries 

 it underground for twenty-eight days, the 

 period of a lunary revolution. This four 

 weeks' incubation quickens the pill-maker's 

 progeny. On the twenty-ninth day, which 

 the insect knows to be that of the conjunction 

 of the sun and moon and of the birth of the 

 world, he goes back to his buried ball ; he digs 

 it up, opens it and throws it into the Nile. 

 That completes the cycle. Immersion in the 

 sacred waters causes a Scarab to emerge 

 from the ball. 



Let us not laugh overmuch at these 

 Pharaonic stories: they contain a modicum 

 of truth mingled with the fantastic theories of 

 astrology. Moreover, a good deal of the 

 laughter would recoil upon our own science, 

 for the fundametal error of regarding as the 

 Scarab's cradle the ball which we see rolling 

 across the fields still lingers in our text-books. 

 All the authors who write about the Sacred 

 Beetle repeat it; the tradition has come down 

 to us Intact from the far-off days when the 

 Pyramids were built. 



It Is a good thing from time to time to 

 wield the hatchet in the overgrown thicket 

 of tradition; it Is well to shake off the yoke 



xi 



