volume 2 - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian History Workshop

The British Museum Collection of Scarabs. 357
jewellery in the British Museum, which hitherto had
included no example of this kind of scarab. A few months
later I was fortunate enough to make the acquaintance
of an official of the Law Department of the Egyptian
Government, whose father had been Mariette's chief
assistant whilst he was excavating Tanis and other
ancient sites in the Delta. Now, Mariette appears to
have taken very little interest in scarabs and small
funerary antiquities, and cis a result his chief assistant
and some of his kinsmen (who were also employed on
the work) made large collections of scarabs, numbering
many thousands. The scarabs which they collected
are commonly known as " Delta scarabs." They lack
the fine green or blue colour of the scarabs of Upper
Egypt, and are more valuable from an historical than
an artistic point of view. But they are of importance,
for on many are cut the names of the Hyksos kings and
of the local rulers of the XVth and XVIth dynasties,
and the symbols and devices with which their bases
are decorated are of great interest. Owing to circumstances
which I need not describe, the legal gentleman
found himself charged with the duty of disposing
of the collections of scarabs which his kinsmen had
made, and he came to me and offered them en bloc
to the British Museum. He would not allow selections
to be made from them, and refused very tempting offers
from some of the European dealers and private collectors.
He scouted the idea of selling them to the Egyptian
Museum in Cairo, for (judging by what he said) his
opinion of the strictness or effectiveness of the custody
of antiquities in that institution was not very high. We
came to terms, and in consequence about 6,000 Delta
scarabs were added to the British Museum collection
in a few years. Subsequently I seized an opportunity
of acquiring the very valuable collection of scarabs
from Upper Egypt made by Mr. Chauncey Murch, so
another 3,000 scarabs were secured. The British Museum
collection of scarabs is at the present time the finest,
largest and most complete in the world, for it not only
includes specimens from Egypt, Nubia and the Sud§.n,