EXTRACT FOR
Scarab
(Kay Nyne)

"This is a Scarab," she whispered to herself, "A dung beetle, a very significant symbol for the ancient Egyptians." Images of scarabs were everywhere in the tomb, engraved into the walls, incorporated into the vast areas of hieroglyphic texts. She'd seen them in the markets, carved stone trinkets for tourists. But I've never seen one like this. It was stone, but the carving was so perfect that it could easily be mistaken for the real beetle.

On a low table beside the tunnel wall sat an empty tray, an artefacts tray. "And now I finally have something to put in it." she chuckled as she placed the stone scarab in the middle.

Imagine actually finding something in this sand, after days of digging, and right at the exact moment I declared there was nothing here!

She grabbed the shovel and took another scoop.

"Damn!" she exclaimed, two more scarabs sat in the bottom of the sieve, both identical to the first.

Quickly she dug another shovel-full, the metal blade struck objects in the loose sand. Jenny knelt down and began to scrape the sand away with her hands, then gasped to find what appeared to be a pocket, filled with stone beetles. There must be dozens of them she thought and began to pick them out in handfuls. Very soon the artefacts tray was full and she was steady filling a bucket, dozens became hundreds, all beautifully carved, all identical.

Could these be actual beetles, that have fossilised?

But fossils are prehistoric, millions of years old, and the tomb has been here for just a few thousand years?

The scarabs were a conundrum, but I'm not going to stress about it, after all I'm not the expert here, I'm just a donkey who does all the digging, someone up above will probably know what they are, and why they're here.

"And that's about all of them." she told herself as she returned to sieving, now only every other shovel-full producing a beetle. Jenny sieved three more scoops without any discovery, then set about wheeling her barrow out of the tomb complex to tip the spoil out into the desert.