Scarab (artifact)

Okay kiddo, do you know what a beetle is? It's a bug that you might see crawling around outside. But in the ancient world, there was a special kind of beetle called a scarab that people thought was really important.

The scarab beetle was seen as a symbol of new life and rebirth because it's able to roll a ball of dung (poop) along the ground and bury it in the dirt, then it would hatch into new baby beetles. People thought this was really cool and they started making little figurines of the scarab out of all kinds of materials like clay, stone, and precious metals like gold or silver. These little scarab artifacts were often used as good luck charms, jewelry or decorations in homes and tombs.

They were so important to ancient Egyptians that they even wrote their names and messages on the bottoms of the scarabs, and when they died, they were sometimes buried with these special scarab amulets. These scarabs were believed to help guide the person's soul safely into the afterlife.

So, a scarab is a little beetle that was really important to people a long, long time ago, and they made little statues of it to use as good luck charms, jewelry, and decorations. Cool, huh?