Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story:

• Archaeologists recently discovered a scarab amulet inside a tomb in the Necropolis of El Toro in Spain.
• It’s not clear how the scarab got there, but an ancient trade route may have played a role.
• The researchers believe the scarab was manufactured sometime in the 5th or 6th century B.C.E., during the reign of one of the several pharaohs named Psamtek.

Ancient Egyptians saw the sacred scarab (Scarabaeus sacer) as a living talisman. S. sacer is a species of dung beetle, meaning that individuals spend their days rolling balls of dung over hot sand. That may not seem very otherworldly, but for Egyptians, their behavior made scarabs perfect symbols for the cycle of life, death, and rebirth. Scarabs were everywhere in Egyptian mythology, and were immortalized in hieroglyphs, jewelry, and magical amulets that were slipped into the wrappings of the dead during mummification.

Scarab amulets were distinctively Egyptian. So… why would one be buried in a Spanish necropolis?

That’s what archaeologist Luis Benítez de Lugo Enrich from the Complutense University of Madrid wondered when his team found a scarab amulet inside a tomb in the Necropolis of El Toro, which was built by an indigenous Iberian people known as the Oretani before the Romans came and conquered the region. The tomb also contained cremated human remains in ceramic urns, and because cremation was rarely practiced by Egyptians before conquest by Alexander the Great brought Greek funerary rites in its wake, it seems unlikely that the remains are Egyptian.

The archaeological team determined that the scarab itself, however, was unquestionably Egyptian. Made of faience, a type of glazed earthenware, the bluish-green amulet is exquisitely preserved and inscribed with hieroglyphs and Demotic characters that read p-s-m-t-k, a title shared by several pharaohs of the 26th Dynasty (also known as the Saite Dynasty) who took the throne with the name Psamtek. The inscription doesn’t indicate a royal burial, since a pharaoh was always buried in the sands of his homeland. Instead, it likely served a purpose similar to royal faces stamped on coins during their rule. Part of the pharaoh’s name translates to son of Ra, a title used since the Fourth Dynasty to set the Egyptian ruler apart as the divine offspring of the solar deity Amun Ra. The meaning of the other part of the inscription is less certain, but the archaeologists theorize that it may designate the deceased as a “seller of mixed wine.”

“This denomination also served as an anthroponym for private personages of this 26th Dynasty, sometimes combined with various words in anthroponyms of the type Psamtek-Seneb or Anj-Psamtek, among others,” Benítez said in a study recently published in The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology. “The possible meaning of this anthroponym is still doubtful.”

Amulets like the one found in the tomb were originally intended only for the wealthy. But once the Egyptians discovered that such amulets could be mass-produced using molds, things became a lot more affordable. People flocked to open-air markets to buy mummy-shaped figurines called shabti (which were believed to open the doors to the the afterlife) and heart scarabs (which were amulets inscribed with a spell and placed close to the heart to prevent it from divulging any sins committed in life). To pass into the afterlife safely, a heart was supposed to be lighter than the feather of Ma’at, and when it was weighed by the gods against the feather, sins would weigh it down. If the heart passed the test, the deceased would be granted eternal life. If not, they would be eaten by Ammut, the crocodile-headed Devourer of the Dead who hungrily paced in the shadows with the forepaws of a lion and hindquarters of a hippopotamus.

When and how this particular amulet reached the Iberian Peninsula remains an open question. Some manufacturing of these amulets was done in Egyptian workshops outside of Egypt, but the spelling of the inscription and the materials it’s made of strongly suggest that it came from the land of the pharaohs, much like other scarabs with the same inscription that were also traced to Egypt. Benítez thinks it probably arrived in what is now Spain via trade routes during the 6th century B.C.E. (a particularly important trade route passed along the nearby Jabalón River).

“The scarab could have been traded or exchanged between residents of the Phoenician-Punic peninsular settlements and the native population,” he said, “although we cannot document how much time elapsed until its deposition in the grave goods of [its tomb].”

Precisely when the scarab made its journey to the afterlife is also a mystery/ But, as much of El Toro has still not been excavated, the answer may lie in a yet-undiscovered burial containing another Egyptian relic.