WALTERS-EG
Walters Art Museum (Egyptian) · jewelry
Heart Scarab
Description
<p>This serpentine scarab has a flat underside with a vertically arranged inscription with the text from spell 30B of the "Book of the Dead." The back of the scarab has a detailed design with a polished surface and almost balanced proportions. The workmanship is good and the piece is carefully made. This scarab functioned as an independent, user individualized funerary amulet with a renewal connotation and supportive function for the deceased in the Court of the Dead.</p><p>For the latest information about this object, <cite><a href='https://purl.thewalters.org/art/42.81' rel='external'>Heart Scarab</a></cite>, visit the Online Collection of the Walters Art Museum.</p>
AI image analysis GPT-5.4-nano
Machine-generated from the object's image on Jul 2026. Not curatorial; treat deities, names, and signs below as the model's best reading, not authority.
An oval/rounded heart scarab amulet is shown in close-up, covered on its face with dense incised hieroglyphic text in vertical registers.
The object appears as a dark stone scarab/heart amulet with a rounded-oval profile and a flat face. The surface is fully occupied by incised black hieroglyphs arranged in multiple vertical columns (registers) that run from the left edge to the right edge. The signs are sharply cut and vary in height; some include seated/standing human figures and other conventional epithets, though individual sign identities are not fully certain from the resolution. No explicit cartouche framing or clearly readable royal prenomen is confidently identifiable. No Greek, Coptic, or Arabic text is visible. The image does not show any relief of a deity figure—only hieroglyphic writing—so deity identification is limited to what can be inferred from uncertain signs. The overall appearance is consistent with the catalogue’s “Heart Scarab” designation and with a black-brown serpentine-like material, though the photo’s lighting affects perceived color.
hieroglyphic only
unclear (likely Late Period to Ptolemaic based on typical amuletic style, but not confidently determinable from the image alone)
good
Materials
black-brown stone (serpentine per catalogue)
Signs
incised hieroglyphic text in multiple vertical columns (exact signs unclear) ×50
Inscriptions (1)
Inscription #1
English description
[Translation] Recitation of Osiris: (the) head of beverages depot, Pa-en-Ptah: / Heart (that I received) from my mother, heart (that I received) from my mother, heart of my (different) ages, do not stand up against / me as witness; do not contradict me in the court; do nothing against me in front of the deities; / do not treat me with hostility in front of the Keeper of the Balance. You are my Ka (life-force), which is in my body; the creator, / who makes the limbs of my body whole; you may come out to the beautiful place, which is there prepared for me. Do not cause my name / to stink in the presence of the members of the court, who make people to resurrected (at) the beautiful place. Excellent is it for the posers; a pleasure is it / for the judge. Do not speak lies against me beside the great god. / See, you are elected to exist (as a justified one).
Cross-references (2)
- Walters-AccNum 42.81 tier-2
- Walters-id 27145 tier-2
Similar inscriptions · by content embedding
About this record's data
- From the source institution — accession, description, dimensions, and dating are as catalogued by Walters Art Museum (Egyptian).
- AI-inferred — the image-analysis panel (deities, names, signs) is machine-generated and may be wrong.
- Approximate location — most map points are plotted at the site centroid, not the exact findspot.
- Inferred links — cross-references marked with a match method other than explicit-source-field were matched by us, not stated by the source.