Commemorative scarabs of Amenhotep III

During the reign of the ancient Egyptian pharaoh Amenhotep III hundreds of so-called memorial scarabs were issued to commemorate the deeds of the pharaoh. Such scarabs were found in several archaeological sites of the Near East, from Syria to Sudan. Over two hundred of them are known to exist in museums and collections around the world.

Most of the scarabs are made of steatite painted blue or green. Their length varies between 4.7 and 11 cm, their width between 7 and 8.9 cm. Most of them are pierced for threading. On the basis of their inscriptions the scarabs can be divided into five groups (in parentheses the number of scarabs of the type found on several sites):

The scarabs are likely to have been made at the same time, in or after the 11th regnal year. The scarab beetle was a symbol of the sun god Khepri, and glazed materials were called tjehenet ('shining') in Egyptian, so the shining scarabs refer to the king, the dazzling Sun himself.

The lion hunt scarabs emphasise the pharaoh's strength and bravery by recording that Amenhotep killed over a hundred lions (102; 110 on some scarabs) during the first ten years of his reign. These have the shortest inscription (7 lines), their average length is 7,7 cm. The lion hunt scarabs vary the most in size; the smallest scarab is 4,7 cm long, the largest is more than twice its size with a length of 9,5 cm.

The so-called marriage scarabs actually refer not to the marriage itself, and neither do they mention a marriage date. They record the name of Amenhotep's chief queen Tiye (following that of her husband), along with the names of her parents, as if to explicitly state her non-royal birth: the name of her father is Yuya, the name of her mother is Thuya; she is married to the great king whose southern border is at Karoy and whose northern is Naharin. Tiye's importance is shown by defining the boundaries of the empire in terms of her. The length of the inscription on these scarabs is 9-10 lines, the scarabs' average length is 8,5 cm.

The lake scarabs commemorate the construction of an artificial lake for Queen Tiye in the 11th regnal year. On these, the name and titles of the pharaoh are followed by those of Tiye, the names of her parents, then the description of the lake that was dug in Tiye's town Djaruha. The lake was 3700×700 cubits large, and the royal couple was rowed on the lake in the royal barge Aten-tjehen. The name of the boat means 'Shining Sun-disc', this is the first appearance of this name which later becomes an epithet of the king himself. The lake scarabs vary the most in their texts, but the differences don't affect the meaning of the text itself. The text is 11 lines long, the average length of these scarabs is 8,4 cm.

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