Note 2 — Chapter vii · THE SACRED BEETLE: THE NYMPH; THE RELEASE

Then what is the cause of the Sacred Beetle’s original mutilation? I will frankly confess that I have no idea. Nevertheless those two maimed members are very strange, so strange indeed that they have enticed the masters, the greatest masters, into lamentable errors. Listen, first of all, to Latreille,2 the prince of descriptive entomologists. In his article on the insects which ancient Egypt painted or carved upon her monuments,3 he quotes the writings of Horapollo,4 a unique document preserved for us in the papyri for the glorification of the sacred insect: