Khepri, "He who is coming into being," was the god associated with the scarab or dung beetle. He symbolized the rising sun that crossed the sky, denoting rebirth and transformation.
The antennae of the scarab resembled horns, and the ball of dung that appeared between them as the insect pushed suggested the solar disk which appears between horns on the heads of ancient Egyptian deities.
Khepri appeared in various forms. He was sometimes a man with a scarab head, as seen above. Other images show a man with a scarab crown. Sometimes he was depicted as the beetle itself. Alternative spellings of his name include Chepri, Kheper, Khepera and Khephir.
The scarab image was widely used for amulets. Indeed, I learned the word scarab when I was a teenager and my Aunt Leona brought me back a souvenir scarab following a visit to Cairo.
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