Scarab Inscribed with a New Year's Wish

Seal-amulets bearing wishes and blessings related to divinities whose protection individuals wished to summon are particular popular during the (late) New Kingdom and the Third Intermediate Period (ca. 1295-664 B.C.).

The hieroglyphs and motifs engraved on the base of this amulet express a wish for the New Year. At the top is a pair of cow’s horns (meaning ‘to open’) with a sun disk between them. In the center, we see the oval hieroglyph for island surrounding a horizontal stroke representing the water. According to ancient Egyptian cryptography, the oval with water line forms the name of the god Amun. Cryptographic writing makes use of standard signs’ atypical values and introduces alternative signs based on such principles as acrophony, generally with the objective to form divine names. The hieroglyph for good and beautiful and the palm branch, the sign for year, complete the inscription, asking the sun god –literally – to ‘open a good year’.