pushed upwards out of the underworld...

as part of my EtsyMetal team, I partook in the August challenge of creating something that was inspired by Ancient Jewelry.

this is what I was inspired by:

and

they are heart scarabs from Ancient Egypt, so beautiful and full of ritual and meaning.  they believed that the young sun god Khepri, pushed the sun god Ra, upwards out of the underworld and into the sky each morning.  this is much like the way a dung beetle pushes the ball of dung with the youngs eggs laid in it, resembling new life coming out of the ball, or the sun.  Understandably, Khepri had the head of a scarab beetle, and that is where all of the lore comes from. 

scarabs were also used to aid one on their journey into the afterlife, and were heavily adorned on tombs and hung around the mummy necks to protect them.

it was from these thoughts that I was inspired to create my piece. 

I used a trilobite fossil to represent the scarab, and etched into a brass tablet my hand drawn representation of some of the heiroglyphs from the heart scarab.

I'm quite obsessed with how this came out, and can't wait for my fresh supply of trilobites to arrive so that I can begin experiementing with other ideas in my brain!!!