This division is always interesting to visitors who have any knowledge
of the essential excellences of textile fabrics. There can be no doubt
of the high repute in which the linens of ancient Egypt were held of
old; but the samples which have remained in a state of preservation up
to the present day, being mostly bandages of the coarse cloths from
mummies, it is hardly possible to estimate fairly the excellence of
the fabrics with which, the great men of ancient Egypt adorned their
persons and those of their wives. However, one or two samples of
linen, as fine as the celebrated muslins of India, remain, and the
visitor should notice particularly those clothes in the case with fine
blue selvage. In the case also are part of the bandages of an Egyptian
mummy of the Greek period, and a sample of ancient Egyptian linen
bleached by the modern process. With these specimens are skeins of
thread, spindles, and knitting-needles; bronze sewing needles; and a
hackle for flax-dressing. With this case the visitor closes his
examination of the wall cases of the Egyptian room. On taking a
general survey of the room, the objects that will first attract his
attention are the casts of the remarkable sculptures from the entrance
to the temple at Beit-onally near Kalabshe, placed over the wall-cases
against the eastern and western walls. These are faithful
representations of the painted sculpture for which the ancient
Egyptians were famous, about thirteen centuries before our era. The
specimens in the room represent the triumphs of the second Rameses.
The cast against the eastern wall is in two distinct compartments. In
the first, Rameses, accompanied by his sons, is driving his vanquished
Ethiopian enemies into a wood: in the second part the conqueror is
investing the vanquished Ethiopian prince with a gold chain, and
behind are the spoils of war, and Ethiopians leading strange oxen to
the victor; while, in the lower division, the vanquished prince is
presenting a load of tributary treasure to the king, followed by a
crowd of Ethiopians, leading all kinds of animals. These paintings, as
the visitor will observe, are painted without regard to light and
shade, the figures are huddled together, and the drawing is of the
most rigid description. The casts against the western wall are in five
compartments, and celebrate the victories of Rameses over the Asiatic
nations. In the first compartment Rameses is receiving his Asiatic
captives; in the second he is about to decapitate a prisoner; in the
third, in his kingly cap, he is defeating an Asiatic army, who are
represented in active flight; in the fourth he is attacking an Asiatic
fortress; and in the fifth the king is again receiving Asiatic
prisoners. Having noticed these remarkable antiquities, the visitor
should examine the plaster models, placed upon the central table of
the room, of the obelisks of Karnak and Heliopolis. Above the door is
a leather cross, from the dress of a Copt priest, supposed to be about
twelve hundred years old. Above various cases are placed mummy
coffins, and figures of deities too large for the cases; but the
mummy-case deposited over case 31 is worth special attention. It is
scooped out of the trunk of a tree, has the face painted black, a
vulture on the chest, and other ornaments and symbols. Near it, over
cases 30-32, are deposited four sepulchral vases of a military
officer, containing the parts removed from the body in the process of
embalming. Each vase was sacred to a deity; the first, containing the
stomach and appendages, was sacred to Amset the first genius of the
dead; the second, containing the lesser intestines, was presided over
by the second genius of the dead, Hapi; the lungs and heart, deposited
in the third vase, were sacred to Siumutf, the third genius; and to
the fourth genius the vase containing the liver and gall-bladder was
dedicated.
The visitor having noticed these objects has done with the Egyptian
room. It is well, however, to pause upon the threshold, and before
dismissing these interesting glimpses into the life, long since
scattered as dust, upon the soil of Egypt, to call to mind the
prominent points of the impressive story that may be read in the room
he is about to quit. He may wander back through the histories of ages
upon ages; pause before the revelations of Herodotus; and recall the
mighty romances of Homer; and, pausing even there, where all is so
dim, and little understood, turn once more to these fragmentary
monuments of a civilisation that existed even centuries before the
great Greek poet. So silently, for us of the present hour, time rolled
by in those days, that we fail to grasp the measure of the distance
which separates our fret and toil of the nineteenth century, from that
busy valley of the Nile; when the second Rameses reigned in all his
glory; when precise artists were ruling geometrical lines upon stones
to make their careful drawings; and painters, with their palm-fibre
brushes, all unconscious of the critics that lay yet silently in the
womb of time, who would shovel the dust and dirt of centuries from
before their works, and tell the story of Rameses from these rude
revelations. Curious thoughts crowd in every busy brain, before these
strange relics. Lost in the depths of the past, the mind, with a leap,
often grasps at the future; and men will be found seriously saying to
themselves, as they notice how we depend for our knowledge of ancient
Egyptian fabrics upon the shrouds of ancient Egyptians,--what, if we
looked forward, and in the remote centuries that are rolling toward
us, see all our vast and busy Lancashire some layers underground, and
archaeologists busy with our winding sheet! Well, at the least, these
thoughts are not idle. It does all of us good to think often of what
has been, and to dream of the future to which we are driving "down the
ringing grooves of time"--to think sometimes of the fine people who
had their glorious days, when London was distributed, untouched by
human hands, in clayey strata, and remote stone quarries; and
hereabouts, to the minds of the Greeks, lay the islands of the
blessed.
The visitor should now proceed southward into the room called The
Bronze Room. Here are collected the ancient bronzes of which the
Museum trustees are in possession; including specimens of the fine
castings of ancient Greece, which, with all our modern contrivances,
we cannot surpass in the present day. The cases to the left are filled
with a supplementary collection of the remains of ancient Egyptian
art, for which space could not be found in the Egyptian room. These
occupy no less than twenty-six cases. The first eleven cases (1-11)
are filled with various sepulchral fragments in various substances,
and porcelain and terra-cotta figures, which the visitor who has just
emerged from the Egyptian room will again recognise. Here the strange
figures of the Egyptian deities occur again and again; but the visitor
should pause before the case 10, 11, in which are deposited models of
the Egyptian funeral boats, in stone and wood, from Thebes, and on the
fourth shelf a Roman caricature on papyrus, representing lions and
goats playing at dice, and foxes driving geese. In the Egyptian cases
are more specimens of cynocephali, jackal, and hawks' heads, models of
the four sepulchral vases, in pottery and wood; more mummy coffins,
fragments of inscribed pottery, large Egyptian terra-cotta vases, and
in cases 24, 25, are deposited some fragments in terra-cotta, and
bronze excavated by Mr. Layard, in ancient Assyria. Having glanced at
these Egyptian cases the visitor should turn at once to the collection
of