The curious history of Tutankhamun’s scarab

Simon, Rita (2025) The curious history of Tutankhamun’s scarab. In: Aegyptus et Pannonia IX. Magyar-Egyiptomi Baráti Társaság, Ókori Egyiptomi Bizottság, Budapest, pp. 205-266. ISBN 9786156571045; 9786156571052

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Abstract

For modern times the so-called Libyan Desert Glass Area – about 800 km west of the Nile Valley in the Great Sand Sea of the Egyptian Western Desert – was probably discovered in 1846; and it was first mentioned in 1850 by the orientalist French consul of Jeddah, Fulgence Fresnel, in Bulletin de la Société de Geographie. The breakthrough scientific discovery of the area still awaited until 1932 by the expedition of Patrick A. Clayton. The formation of Libyan Desert Glass (LDG) was for the most part cleared in 2019 by Aaron J. Cavoise and Christian Koeberl, who provided evidence about a meteorite impact origin of LDG approximately 30 million years ago. Curiously enough, a 2pr/scarab figure was made of this greenish-yellow translucent natural glass in one of Tutankhamun’s pectorals found by Howard Carter in 1922 which had previously been thought to be chalcedony until 1998. The appearance of an LDG artefact is so far unique in the material culture of pharaonic archaeology since no other object is known to have been made of LDG in the Nile Valley. The decorative motifs of the pectoral represent complex symbolism related to the movement of the sun and the moon, and the perpetual afterlife transformations of the deceased pharaoh. In the following, after a short introduction into the background of LDG, an analysis will be carried out regarding how and when the scrap for Tutankhamun might have travelled to the Nile Valley, how the mineral might have been perceived there and how the symbolism of the scarab of special qualities can be interpreted in the pectoral. I regard this paper as my commemoration of the 100 th anniversary of the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun at the Objects and Concepts Conference held from 19 th to 20 th January 2023 by the Hungarian-Egyptian Friendship Society, Ancient Egyptian Committee (HEFS AEC) in Budapest.

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