Scarabæus (Ateuchus sacer), one of the dung-beetles (Coprophaga), well known for the zeal with which they unite in rolling balls of dung to their holes. The dung serves as food, and a beetle having secured a ball seems to gnaw at it continuously—sometimes for a fortnight—until the supply is exhausted. Sometimes an egg is laid in the ball and the parents unite in rolling this to a place of safety, above the level of the annual inundations. The genus is represented by about sixty species in the countries around the Mediterranean. By the Egyptians the scarabæus was venerated during its life, and often embalmed after death! Entomologists have recognised four distinct species sculptured on the Egyptian monuments, and gems of various kinds of stones were often fashioned in their image. Several mystical ideas were associated with the scarabæus: the number of its 'toes,' thirty, symbolised the days of the month; the time it deposited the balls containing the eggs was supposed to refer to the lunar month; the movement of the ball referred to the action of the sun on the earth, and personified that luminary. The scarabæus was supposed to be only of the male sex, hence it signified the self-existent, self-begotten, generation or metamorphosis, and the male or paternal principle of nature. In this sense it appears on the head of the pygmaean deity, Ptah-Socharis Osiris, and in astronomical and sepulchral formulas; and Khepra was a scarab-headed god. The custom of engraving scarab gems passed from Egyptians to Greeks and Etruscans. An engraved scarab of carnelian is figured at GEM.
See Rev. W. J. Loftie, An Essay of Scarabs (1884); and W. M. Flinders Petrie, Historical Scarabs (1889).