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The scarab beetle: the sign for "to come into being"

14 October 2026

In ancient Egypt the scarab beetle stood for coming into being. As a hieroglyph (L1 in Gardiner's list) it writes the verb ḫpr, said "kheper": to become, to take shape, to exist.

Worn as an amulet or pressed into clay as a seal, it carried the same hope of new life and lasting existence. It is one of the commonest signs in royal names, so you will meet it in museums long before you can read a full sentence.

Egyptians saw the sun in the beetle's ball

The sign pictures the sacred scarab, Scarabaeus sacer, a dung beetle seen from above: a rounded back split by the line of the wing cases, a small head and short legs.

The real beetle shapes dung into a ball and rolls it across the ground, pushing it with its back legs. The Egyptians saw the sun in that ball. Khepri, the sun god at dawn, was pictured as a scarab pushing the sun's disc up over the horizon each morning.

Young beetles hatch inside buried balls of dung and later dig their way out. Many Egyptologists think this sight, beetles that seemed to rise out of the earth by themselves, suited a god of new beginnings. The ancient texts state the link through the word itself: Khepri is "the one who comes into being".

Scarab beetle Sun

One beetle writes three consonants

L1 is a three-consonant sign: ḫ, p and r in one picture. Scribes often add the mouth (D21) after it as a reminder of the final r. Vowels were never written, so "kheper" is the modern way of saying it.

With plural strokes after it, the same sign writes ḫprw, "kheperu": forms, appearances, the shapes a god or a king takes. Creator gods are praised in the texts as beings who came into existence by themselves, a phrase built on this verb.

Khepri's own name uses it too. The beetle is then both the sound of the name and a picture of the god.

Mouth Plural strokes

Seven rulers on the site carry it in a cartouche

In a throne name the sign usually names a form of the sun god, as in these names from the site's timeline:

Senusret I: Kheperkare, 'The ka of Ra comes into being'
Thutmose I: Aakheperkare
Thutmose III: Menkheperre, 'Lasting is the form of Ra'
Tutankhamun: Nebkheperure, 'Lord of forms is Ra'
Psusennes I: Aakheperre Setepenamun
Siamun: Netjerkheperre, 'Divine is the form of Ra'
Shoshenq II: Heqakheperre, 'The form of Ra is ruler'

Cartouche

Scarab seals were made by the thousand

Small stone or glazed scarabs served as seals and amulets. The flat underside carries a name, a title, a short good wish or a pattern. Menkheperre, the throne name of Thutmose III, kept being cut on scarabs for centuries after his death.

Larger pieces had special jobs. A heart scarab was laid on the chest of a mummy, inscribed with spell 30B of the Book of the Dead, which asks the heart not to speak against its owner at the judgement. Amenhotep III issued big scarabs that announced events of his reign: lion hunts, a wild bull hunt, a lake dug for Queen Tiye. Others, called marriage scarabs, name Tiye and her parents beside the king. A giant granite scarab of his, first set up at his memorial temple across the river, now stands by the sacred lake at Karnak.

On walls the sign is easiest to find in cartouches: Menkheperre all over the festival hall at Karnak and in the tomb of Thutmose III, and Nebkheperure on Tutankhamun's treasure at the Grand Egyptian Museum.

Swarming tomb beetles come from films

Adventure films show scarabs pouring out of tombs to eat intruders. Egyptian amulets and spells treat the beetle as a protector and a promise of renewal. A few tombs, most of them Old Kingdom tombs of officials, do warn anyone who harms them that the gods will judge him. None of these warnings mentions beetles, and the "curse of the pharaohs" is a modern legend.

The scarab keeps its head at the top

Start with an oval for the back, slightly narrower at the top. Add a small rounded head above it, a line down the middle for the wing cases and three short legs on each side.

Seen from above, the beetle keeps its head at the top whichever way the text runs. Unlike a bird or a person, it does not tell you which way a line of text is read.

Draw the scarab and check it

Questions

How do you pronounce kheper?

Egyptologists say "KHEP-er", with the kh of Scottish loch. The e is a modern filler: the Egyptians wrote only consonants, so the real vowels are unknown.

What is written on the bottom of a scarab?

Usually a royal name, the name and title of an official, a god's name or a short wish for good fortune. Some carry only spirals or patterns, used as a seal design.

Was the scarab beetle worshipped?

The god Khepri was. Tomb paintings show him as a beetle in the sun's boat, or as a man with a scarab for a head.

Why do so many pharaohs have a scarab in their name?

Throne names usually praise the sun god Ra, and the scarab let a king name a form or appearance of Ra. Each king chose a different word to put with it.

Glossary

amulet: A small charm worn by the living or wrapped with a mummy for protection, often shaped like a sign such as the ankh or the scarab.
Book of the Dead: A collection of spells written on papyrus and placed in burials from the New Kingdom on, to guide the dead through the afterlife. Egyptians called it the Spells for Coming Forth by Day.
cartouche: An oval ring drawn around a royal name, a loop of rope tied at one end. Kings wrote their two main names in cartouches.
Gardiner code: A label for a hieroglyph from the sign list in Alan Gardiner's Egyptian Grammar of 1927, such as A1 for the seated man. The signs are grouped by what they show.
hieroglyphs: The picture signs of ancient Egyptian writing, used from about 3200 BC to AD 394. A sign can stand for sounds, for a whole word, or for the kind of thing a word means.
mummy: A body dried and wrapped in linen so that it would last. Egyptians believed the spirit needed it in the afterlife.
Old Kingdom: The age of the pyramid builders, about 2686 to 2181 BC, from the 3rd to the 6th Dynasty.
scarab: The dung beetle, sign of the rising sun and of the word ḫpr, "to come into being". Carved scarabs were used as seals and amulets.
scribe: A person trained to read and write, who kept accounts, wrote letters and copied texts. Few Egyptians could write, and scribes were well respected.
temple: The house of a god, where priests served the god's statue. Temples for dead kings kept up their offerings after death.
throne name: The name a king took when he came to the throne, written in the first cartouche after the title "King of Upper and Lower Egypt". Egyptologists also call it the prenomen.
tomb: A burial place: a pit, a mastaba, a pyramid or rooms cut into rock. Its chapel was where the family brought offerings.