THE EGYPTIAN ROOM.

This room is always an attractive part of the Museum to the majority of visitors. Here are arranged illustrative specimens of the arts and customs of people who lived two thousand years before our era; and the preserved bodies of men and women who trod the streets of Thebes and Memphis, partakers of an advanced civilisation, when the inhabitants of Europe were roaming about uncultivated wastes, in a state of barbarism. Here are graceful household vessels, compared with the art of which the willow pattern of the nineteenth century is a barbarism, and fabrics of which modern Manchester would not be ashamed. Into this room a vast collection of Egyptian curiosities is crowded; and, with patience, the visitor may glean from an examination of its contents a vivid general idea of the arts and social comforts of the ancient people who built the Pyramids, and were in the height of their prosperity centuries before the Christian era. The cases are so divided and sub-divided that it is only by paying particular attention to the numbers marked upon them that the visitor can hope to follow our directions with ease. He will see, however, on first entering the room, that the mummies are placed in cases occupying the central space of the room; and that huge and gaudily painted coffins, having a somewhat ghastly effect, are placed perpendicularly here and there on the top of the wall cases. But the attention of the visitor on entering this room is usually rivetted at once upon the human remains of people that flourished more than two thousand years before our era. The first thought that rises in the mind of the spectator on beholding these wrecks of the human form, is,-why all this trouble, these bandages, these scents, and these orna

ments? It is as well, therefore, to explain that the ancient Egyptians believed that there would be a resurrection of the body hereafter. They believed that these poor mummies would issue from these waxen bandages, and once more walk and talk as of old; hence their gigantic excavations at Thebes for secure tombs ; hence the great Pyramids built to preserve the sacred forms of their Pharaohs. Some of the ancient Egyptians retained the embalmed bodies of their relations in their houses, enclosed in coffins, upon which the face of the deceased was faithfully pourtrayed. Some specimens of these representations are in the room, and some in the Egyptian saloon below. The mummies of the poorer classes were not so well preserved as those of the rich; therefore, remains of the plebs have crumbled to dust, while those of the sacerdotal class, having been deprived of the intestines, and the brain having been drawn through the nose, having been filled with myrrh, cassia, &c., soaked in natron,* and then securely bandaged, have remained in a comparatively sound state to the present time, and may be found in every museum of any note.

HUMAN MUMMIES.

The first five cases to which the visitor would do well to direct his attention are those marked from 46 to 50. In the first division is deposited the mummy of a female, with a gilt mask over the head and an oskh or collar about the neck; and mummies of children, and fragments of coffins, with paintings of Egyptian deities upon them. In the second division of the cases,

* Sesquicarbonate of soda that is found in the west of the Delta. In Mexico there are several natron lakes.

lies some of the kingly dust of the builder of the third pyramid, King Mencheres; also, part of his coffin; the sides of a coffin decorated with drawings of deities; clumps of mummied hair; and mummies of children. In the third division are tessera from Egyptian mummies of the Grecian period, with various figures, including one of Anubis, the embalmer of the dead; a mummy of Amounirion covered with a curious network of bugles in blue porcelain; the upper part of a coffin with dedications to the Egyptian god Osiris; a small coffin containing the mummy of a child; the mummy of a female, Auch-sen-nefer, upon which is a scarabæus, the sacred beetle of the Egyptians. In the fourth division the principal object is the coffin of the lastnamed mummy, with representations of various deities, including Nutpe, or the Abyss of Heaven, a female figure with a vase on her head; and linen wrappers from mummies of the Greek period. Having examined these human relics of remote antiquity, the visitor should pass at once to cases 63, 64, leaving the intermediate cases for future examination, where he will find scraps and fragments of the coffins, wrappers, and ornaments of various mummies. In the first division are fragments of the mask of mummy coffins; fragments from the lower end of coffins with the Egyptian bull Apis carrying a mummy upon it; and hands (one holding a roll) from mummy coffins; sepulchral sandals, one with a foreign figure bandaged, in token of the enemies of the deceased being at his feet. In the second division are a variety of sepulchral tablets to Osiris, Isis, Anubis, and other Egyptian deities. The next twelve cases are filled with human mummies and their coffins. In the first case is a mummy (1) of Pefaakhons, an auditor of the royal palace during the twenty-sixth dynasty. This mummy is about two thousand two

hundred years old. Upon it the visitor may notice the representation of Egyptian deities Osiris, the Hawk of Ra, Isis, the embalmer Anubis, and the bull Apis, Mummy number two, in this case, is that of a priest of Amoun, Penamoun, swathed in its bandages, and here also is the outer linen case of the mummy of Harononkh. The next case (66) is devoted to the mummy and coffin of Tatshbapem: the figures here represented are the deceased praying to Osiris, the usual figure of the embalmer of the dead, Anubis, and a scarabæus, or sacred beetle, made of beads. The next case contains the coffin and mummy of a priestess of Amoun, named Kotbti. The hair is attached to the mask of the face, as the visitor will observe, by two ivory studs there are wooden models of the hands and arms decorated with bracelets and rings; each hand upon the coffin holds a nosegay, and here again the black Anubis with his golden face appears in company with Thoth (a figure of a man with the head of an ibis), the Mercury of the Egyptians, god of the moon and inventor of speech, Isis, the Egyptian Ceres, and Nutpe, the Abyss of Heaven. The next case (68) is the highly decorated coffin of the incense-bearer of the abode of Noumra. Here the judgment scene of the Amenti is pourtrayed; Osiris, in the shape of a sphinx; and other sacred figures. The following case (69) contains a mummy (1) of a Theban priest of Amoun, swathed in its outer linen coverings, which are decorated with various Egyptian divinities, and with Asiatic captives at the feet: the second object in this case is the coffin of an incense-bearer of the temple of Khons, with the usual representations of the sepulchral deities. Advancing in the regular order in which the cases are numbered, the visitor will next notice in case 70 the inner coffin of a supposed Egyptian

king, with the bandages with inscriptions at the side. Three mummies are placed in the next case (71) the first of which is crumbling rapidly, the feet being already gone and the bandages of the second present pictures of Anubis embalming the deceased, and Isis mourning over the ceremony. The next four cases (72-75) are also filled with mummies and their appendages, of which the mummy and coffin of a sacred functionary with a gilded face, and a picture of the deceased adoring King Amenophis the First, in the 73rd case, and the mummy and coffin of a musician of the Roman era of Egypt in case 74 are the most remarkable. The last case of mummies (76) contains three mummies. The first is that of a priestess of Amoun, whose form is discernible through the bandages, the feet of which are visible, and the third is that of a woman named Cleopatra, of the family of Soter, Archon of Thebes, with a comb in the hair, and upon the bandages the usual sepulchral deities, including the black Anubis, and in the next case is her coffin.

The visitor having completed his survey of the human mummies should return to the series of cases marked from 52 to 58, in which he will find a curious assortment of

ANIMAL MUMMIES.

Animal life was venerated by the Egyptians. Certain animals were sacred in certain parts of the country; but the ibis and the hawk were generally worshipped. The sacred birds were attended to by the priests. Seven cases in this room are entirely filled with the mummies of these sacred birds. Here are mummies of dogheaded baboons, worshipped at Hermopolis, and sacred to Thoth; a head of the cynocephalus from Thebes; mummies of jackals, sacred to the sepulchral Anubis ;