Winged heart scarab in dark green hard stone. The surface of its back is well polished. Details of the insect's body are represented by incised lines. On the flat side a hieroglyphic text runs horizontally from right to left, giving the name and title of the deceased and the beginning of Chapter 30B of the Book of the Dead. This was part of the funerary equipment of an undisturbed burial, found in a secondary subterranean room of the tomb. It was located on the breast, over the position of the heart. When mummification was performed, the heart was generally kept inside the body. However, very often a stone amulet was added, first shaped in the form of the ancient Egyptian's conventional representation of the heart in hieroglyphic writing, and from the 18th Dynasty, in the form of a large scarab, one of the forms of the god Ra, named Khepri.

Several spells of the Book of the Dead, Chapters 26-9, were intended to prevent the heart of a man from being stolen after his death. In Chapter 30B, used here, the heart itself, regarded as a real being, is called out not to testify against its owner at the moment of the judgement. A very similar heart scarab, now in the Cairo Museum, was discovered about fifty years ago by Steindorff in a New Kingdom tomb at Aniba, the most important site in Lower Nubia at this period.

Sudan Exhibition, British Museum.