The Walters Art Museum (located in Baltimore, Maryland) may not have the most extensive collection of scarab (beetle-shaped) amulets and seals from ancient Egypt and the ancient Near East, but
it does offer a well-rounded view of their development. This volume catalogues the collection for the first time, providing date and provenance identification of each of the 142 pieces of the
collection, together with interpretation of form, type, layout, and style (the visual/syntactic level); icons, script signs, motifs, and texts (the semantic level); and theme and program (the
contextual level). The collection is also reproduced on black and white plates at the conclusion of the volume. The CD-ROM contains more images. Distributed in North America by The David Brown
Book Co. Annotation 穢2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
