eate a
scarabaeus and a vulture, and to denote Athena (Neith,) a vulture and a
scarabaeus."[15]

The scarabaeus also had an astronomical value and is placed on some
zodiacs in place of the crab. It may be found on the outside, or
square planisphere, of the zodiac of the Temple of Denderah. Some
archaeologists think it preceded the crab, as the emblem of the
division of the zodiac called by us, Cancer. Its emblem, as shown on
the Hindu zodiac, looks more like a beetle or other insect than it
does like a crab.[16]

The religious feeling for it, most probably existed among the early
Ethiopians, before the migration of the ancient race who were the
originators of the Egyptians, into the land on the banks of the Nile.
The cult is shown in more modern times by the veneration of the
Hottentot for the same insect, and from the worship of the Holy
Cricket by the natives of Madagascar. The Egyptians held the scarabaeus
especially sacred to Amen-Ra, i.e., the mystery of the sun-god. It was
their symbol of the creative and fertilizing power, of the re-birth,
resurrection and immortality of the soul, and was, through this,
connected with their astronomical and funeral rites and knowledge. It
was, as the living insect, the first living creature seen coming to
life from the fertilizing mud of the Nile, under the influence of the
hot rays of the sun, after the subsidence of the inundating waters of
that river. The royal cartouches of their kings is in an oval taken
from the form of its under side. And this oval form has existed from
the most remote times that we have any knowledge of the cartouch.

It is often found portrayed, as if a passenger in a boat, with
extended wings; holding in its claws the globe of the sun, or elevated
in the firmament, as the type of the creating power of the sun-god Ra,
in the meridian. Other deities are sometimes shown praying to it.[17]

Ptah the Creative Power, and also Khepera, a kosmogonic deity of the
highest type, had the scarab assigned to them as an emblem. It was one
of the forms symbolic of the Demiurge or Maker of our universe. It was
also the emblem of Ptah Tore, of Memphis, another symbolic form of the
creative power. It was assigned as an emblem of Ptah-Sokari-Osiris, the
pigmy deity of Memphis, being placed on his head, and this deity was
sometimes represented under the form of a scarab. It was also an emblem
of Ra, the sun deity; also, an emblem of the world or universe; and
was, as I