Note 32 — Chapter XIII · The Symbolism of Jade

The beetle-god, in whose form the scarab was made, “becomes”, as Budge says, “in a manner a type of the dead body, that is to say, he represents matter containing a living germ which is about to pass from a state of inertness into one of active life. As he was a living germ in the abyss of Nu (the primeval deep) and made himself emerge therefrom in the form of the rising sun, so the germ of the living soul, which existed in the dead body of man, and was to burst into new life in a new world by means of the prayers recited during the performance of appropriate ceremonies, emerged from its old body in a new form either in the realm of Osiris or in the boat of Ra (the sun-god).”32