mighty scarab toils
pushing sun across the sky
hail the dung beetle
35.
sturdy black beetle
merrily rolls her ball of dung
ex-scared scarab
After observing the dung beetle, the ancient Egyptians believed that the sun was rolled across the sky by a celestial dung beetle. All those jade, lapis and other carved scarabs? Dung beetles.
well... that response was heavily editted.
what you see are the positive notes...
which just happen to work "as is", meaning
i like the haiku.
my left brain wanted to say this...
Scarab dung beetles lay eggs in a pellet which they roll along, and the Egyptians regarded this action as an image of the sun and its course through the [heavens], rolled by a gigantic beetle.
The scarab represents the Egyptian god, Khepri. It was Khepri that pushed the sun across the [sky].
The scarab beetle became an ancient Egyptian symbol for rebirth, the ability to be reborn. Each day the sun disappeared, always to rise again and be reborn the following day.
so, in the haiku, sky and heaven are are surely
synonymous. but spiritually, they are quite not.
that the whole conception celebrates rebirth is a
testiment to the anchient's attention to detail.
Hi, Justwait! Since I grew up in Texas watching dung beetles roll their marbles around the cow lot, discovering that the myth of the Egyptian scarab and the lowly Texas dung beetle shared a history delighted me.
Thank you for your careful and erudite comments -- I did not include the god's name in either haiku, I should perhaps write a third haiku expressing the godhead and referring to rebirth and Heaven. All that in a 5-7-5 format stuns me into dung beetle silence. However, I like a challenge! Sue ♥♥♥
