Information

Khepri has a minion!

Sunbearer the Dungus Beetle

Khepri

The

Common Experiment #1536
Owner: Sekhmet

Age: 11 years, 6 months, 2 weeks

Born: November 1st, 2014

Adopted: 11 years, 6 months, 2 weeks ago

Adopted: November 1st, 2014

This pet has been nominated for the Pet Spotlight!

Statistics

Level: 50
Strength: 53
Defense: 10
Speed: 10
Health: 10
HP: 10/10
Intelligence: 156
Books Read: 101
Food Eaten: 0
Job: Veterinary Technician

"A beetle wanders in the night tasting dust, smelling worms, feeling the ground.
He pushes and pushes the seed of himself, a dried ball of dung.
Insanity!
What can come of such preoccupation, such slavish devotion to dung?
Through the belly of darkness, he creeps, struggles with his burden, at first small and soft, now a large, hard, heavy stone.
It is one hour before dawn.
Breezes blow.
The ball of dung turns gold.
In the light of day, the ball breaks; beetles fly into the sun.
That is Khepri." - Hymn to Khepri

To the Egyptians, the sacred scarab beetle was a symbol of rebirth, regeneration, and transformation. The fact that scarabs fly during the hottest part of the day identified the insect with the sun, and thus a sun-god. Kherpi was represented as pushing the sun up into the sky each morning, an image derived from how a scarab beetle rolls a ball of dung.

Kherpi was equated to eternal life. As a god who was constantly reborn, Kherpi was directly associated with the concept of resurrection. Scarab amulets were buried with the dead for this reason, and scarabs are the most common Egyptian amulet found.

A hymn says: “Blessings on thee, Beetle Sun, which rolls into life every day kicking six legs and humming your shiny ball of song. The world is a little patch of ground you travel with no haste.”

Credits

❖ Story by Sekhmet with information from these sources
❖ Background photo from Hasmik Ghazaryan Olson
❖ Profile by Balloon