28 Bulletin of the Brooklyn En,tomological Society Vol. XI 



like the world, rolls it from east to west with its hind legs, itself 

 looking toward the sunrise while rolling its burden along the 

 course of the sun. The dung ball (having within it an e.gg laid by 

 the female) is buried in a hole dug by the fore tibiae, the fore 

 tarsi being obsolete in these beetles. It remains in the hole for 

 twenty-eight days — the lunar month. The creature within, then 

 animated, opens the ball and on the 29th day casts it into the 

 water, for on this day conjunction of sun and moon takes place, 

 of which the generation of the world was the first result. The 

 dentation of the fore tibiae of the scarab are 30 in number, — the 

 days of the celestial month, and those on the head resemble the 



Fig. 3. Fig. 4. 



Fig. 3 is the common type of sculpture of Ka, the Father of all the 

 Gods, known to the Greeks as Batrachacephalus, i. e., with the head of a 

 frog. Note that the scarab is drawn naturally, not conventionalized. This, 

 then, is early art. Inferentially the Father of the Gods is the one wor- 

 shipped earliest. 



Fig. 4 is a much conventionalized scarab from a signet ring of some 

 non-royal person. It is barely possible that the distortion of head is a 

 relic of the oriental phallic worship. 



sun's rays. Hence its dedication to Amen-Ra, the Egyptian God 

 of the Sun Mystery. 



The oldest extant written reference to the scarab is that of 

 Horapollo, an Egyptian, who explains that the word means only 

 begotten. It designates also generation or a father or the world 

 or a man. The Egyptians claimed that the beetles generated 

 without the meeting of the sexes, which would at first seem a re- 

 markable superstition. In fact, however, the copulatory act is 

 performed in great secrecy and is not easily observable. 



