By Ellie Westfall ’27

I took a gap year before entering Kenyon, and found myself in Giza, conducting archaeological research at the base of the pyramids through an internship with the Ancient Egypt Research Associates (AERA). The site is called “Heit el-Ghurab,” or the Town of the Pyramid-Builders. The internship consisted of data entry, social media work, and some translation here and there. I studied bits of clay covered in hieroglyphs, called sealings, working to translate, analyze, and categorize. When I found time to sneak off from the lab, I would steal a trowel and join the excavators as they dug a 4th dynasty alabaster workshop. I received limited training in hieroglyphs, having taken online courses with a University of Chicago professor during Covid lockdowns. The only proof of my proficiency is an honorary diploma that a friend made for me on Canva.

As I explained my love of Egyptian material culture to Professor Brad Hostetler, he searched through the large metal drawers in the Blick-Harris Study Collection. After browsing through hundreds of artifacts, he finds it: a bright blue scarab (Fig. 1). Representing rebirth and renewal, a scarab is a beetle-shaped amulet used to guide the interred body to the afterlife. Inscriptions on the flat underside are typically passages from magical corpora, such as the Book of the Dead. Professor Hostetler asked me what the inscription on the Blick scarab says. When I say I hesitated to respond, it was not for lack of adequate vocabulary or grasp of grammar, it was confusion.

I shook my head and gave Professor Hostetler a weary “I could be wrong but…” as I tried to cover up my immediate doubt of the object. I wanted to believe I was holding an authentic faience scarab, but my hesitation overwhelmed me. I gave a quick reading of the reverse inscription, only understanding the first half “imun”. I took a picture and promised to have a better translation within the week. I sent a drawing to a post-doc Egyptologist with whom I worked in the past. She texted back a variety of emojis, including a thumbs down and question mark.

Peculiarities began to irk me. It was almost too well preserved. It felt light, and had no dirt or discoloration hiding in the crevices. I was used to seeing similar objects in Giza caked in literal millennia of grime. But even when these objects are polished from scrubbing, the wear doesn’t lie. Then there are the glyphs: Why does the bird look so lanky? Why is there a random “t” before “imun”? Why is it vertical? On and on, my life for two weeks was consumed by this tiny blue beetle effigy. In what follows, I discuss three facets of the scarab that suggest it is not an authentic object from ancient Egypt: language and composition, style and condition, and provenance — the most convincing being the last.

Language and Composition

This scarab is written in the Middle Egyptian language in the hieroglyphic script, as there is a sign exclusively found in the Middle Kingdom writings. The script is read starting where the glyphs face, so in this case, right to left, though this is somewhat uncommon for scarabs.

The top three signs could be read as “imun,” which, as a religious forename, would make sense in this context (Fig. 2). The uppermost sign “t” has no reason to be there, technically speaking, but that is negligible compared to the rest of the inscription. The remaining three signs complicate the reading. The fourth sign is a determinative for “ta” (“land”), but it has no other attestations, and the horizontal lines should be left leaning. Beneath this sign, there could perhaps be a “t” phonogram or maybe “nb” ideogram (“lord”), but this is not clear. Finally, the bird glyph at the lower right is highly unusual; it doesn’t resemble any singular bird represented in Gardiner’s Sign List, the widely accepted list of Middle Egyptian hieroglyphs.

Grammar and ill-spelled words aside, I have qualms with the composition. The signs chosen are predominantly long and flat, which any scribe of the time would have placed horizontally on the scarab. The random “t” at the top and the unattested bird give the impression that they were placed last to fill blank space. Such haphazard management of space was not typical. Fitting text onto the scarabs’ reverse was an art form unto itself (Fig. 3). To save space, scribes often reduced complex texts, namely from the Book of the Dead, into just a few glyphs, in turn changing and condensing the Egyptian language. Excess space was never the issue, scarcity was.

Style and Condition

Let’s start with the most striking feature: the bright blue faience. Typically made from crushed up quartz, alkaline salts, and copper, faience is not only a stylistic method, it’s a religious ritual. Because the practice is highly regarded, the artists take extreme care when coating an object. The Blick scarab is notably lacking in careful faience application. It pools and lags and has a level of opacity that would have embarrassed a 15th dynasty craftsman. The obverse is messy — the design, where you would expect clean lines, is unintelligible.

Scarabs were made from a variety of materials: lapis lazuli, basalt, limestone, malachite, serpentine, and turquoise to name a few. Some were carved, like gemstones, and some were set in a mold. One would expect this scarab to be made of steatite, due to its size and rough style. I would argue that it’s made of alabaster, travertine, or an imitation of one of these, as many forgeries are. After spending a fourth of my year digging an alabaster workshop and triaging travertine, I have become familiar with the appearance and feel of worked alabaster.

What first tipped me off about the authenticity of the scarab, before reading and feeling it in my hand, was how well preserved it was. I believe my first (inquisitive at that) words to Professor Hostetler were “when was the last time it was cleaned?” It’s a valid question, but I really wanted to ask “has this even touched Egyptian soil?” Anything that touches the Sahara weathers in front of your eyes. My once light blue pair of sneakers left Egypt brown with only one lace intact. Any scarab, even preserved in the best conditions, shows its age.

Provenance

The provenance (or lack thereof) is the most compelling and convincing argument for deniable authenticity. It was purchased by Boris Blick, father of Professor Sarah Blick. She asserts that her father bought the scarab from Sadigh Gallery in New York around mid-1990s. Minimal research revealed that Sadigh Gallery, located at 5th Avenue and 31st street, just one block from the Empire State Building, has been prosecuted on five counts of forgery and two counts of grand larceny for the production and sale of fake antiquities. The Gallery opened its doors in 1982 after 4 years of mail-order catalog business and peddled these forgeries until 2021.

Professor Blick did make the argument that because her father was only able to spend no more than $100 per purchase, a scarab that cheap would not be worth the labor/supplies of manufacturing. While I see her point, we have proof that Sadigh was mass-producing these objects, with the ideal clientele not being able to tell the difference between a genuine scarab and a forgery. Knowing this, we can assume that the Blick scarab is one of thousands of mass-produced forgeries; selling each for $100 would create a worthwhile return of investment for Sadigh.

In the Spring semester of 2024, I returned to Egypt twice, once for a month in January and again for Spring Break in early March. During my second trip I wandered around Zamalek, a wealthy and westernized artsy neighborhood, where I found a piece comparable to the Blick scarab (Fig. 4). The approximate size, design, color, and style match. This one was sold for only 80 cents and advertised as a souvenir, not an antiquity. The glyphs on the Westfall scarab are even more lacking: 4 horizontal meaningless lines. I found it alongside hundreds of its brothers, all shades of blues and greens.

Based on the evidence described above, the Blick scarab is most likely a forgery. Perhaps it was intended to fool collectors or serve as a simple souvenir, but either way, its authenticity is deniable. I believe there are two intertwined take-aways that arise from my claim. First, the scarab was overlooked, to nobody’s fault, but it was not a piece of intense study before my doubt of its origin. It was in a drawer alongside other antiquities of similar size, not exhibited in a glass case, making my encounter with it happenstance. The second is the prevalence of this unearthed issue. The Blick-Harris Study Collection is not unique in the accidental housing of forgeries; rather, it’s a close-to-home example of its ubiquity. Moving forward both the Blick scarab and the Westfall scarab will live together in the Blick-Harris Study Collection as a tool for future students and perhaps as a lesson in the close, and harsh, realities of antiquity collecting.

Ellie Westfall ’27 is an Art History and Arabic major from Kentucky.