These beautiful and often costly Egyptian scarabs have been made the subject of very exhaustive study by various writers, more particularly by Mr. Loftie and Mr. Flinders Petrie. The Egyptians did not coin money, so that scarabs bearing the names of kings came to have somewhat the same importance for Egyptian history as coins have for the history of later civilized nations. Mr. Loftie traces the origin of the inscribed scarabs to a very early epoch in the Egyptian annals. "From the earliest times until the end of the native monarchy," he says, "certain usages continued unchanged. Among them was the inscription of names and texts on scarabs. The beetle which rolls before it"--he ought rather to have said behind it--"a ball of mud in which its egg is concealed was, at some period so remote that we cannot even approximately date it, seized upon as the embodiment of the idea of futurity.... The scarab, burying his egg, became the symbol of the resurrection, of the happy time to come, of a re-creation of all things; and with every corpse scarabs were buried, and scarabs were sewed upon the shroud, and strung into a network to cover the body, and suspended round the neck, and clasped in the dead hands. As many as three thousand scarabs have been found in one tomb, and the number in existence in museums and private collections is past count." Some of these imitation beetles are of blue pottery, enamelled outside; but others are of lapis lazuli, jade, carnelian, and many other precious stones. Sacred in themselves by their very form, that of the revered insect god, they are rendered still more sacred by their mystic inscriptions, which consist of appropriate religious phrases in hieroglyphic writing. From Egypt, the belief in the luck and value of engraved scarabs as charms or amulets passed on to the Greeks, and also to the Etruscans. Many Greek scarabs have been found; and in the old Etruscan tombs such lucky beasts are comparatively common. They are mostly made more or less in imitation of the Egyptian originals. Oddly enough, even the early Christians themselves did not at once get over the belief in the sanctity and talismanic character of the sacred beetle, for the Rev. W. J. Loftie has pointed out examples of late scarabs engraved with undoubted Christian symbols--not only crosses but even crucifixes. In our own days, a slight revival of the antique superstition has once more taken place, and some ladies of my acquaintance wear specimens of the old sacred beetles as charms in brooches or suspended on their watch-chains. Though such numbers of true ancient scarabs have been unearthed in Egypt, still the supply of the genuine article does not quite keep pace with the increasing demands of the modern tourist: and there is now a flourishing manufactory of sham antiques at Luxor, where hundreds of false scarabs with nice imitation hieroglyphic inscriptions are neatly turned out for the market every season.