orientalcairocit00sladuoft

AS
too crowded ;
CHAPTER XXIV
The Museums of Cairo
might have been expected, Cairo has a first-rate
museum of Egyptian antiquities. The exhibits are not
the attendants have the most deh"ghtful manners
I ever met in a museum. They rise and stand at attention
when you come into a room ; they offer you their chairs ; they
draw back curtains for you, if you want to look at a papyrus
which cannot be left exposed to the sunlight ; to be brief,
they do anything except understand you. It seems an odd
thing in a country where there are thousands of Englishspeaking
Arabs that the only attendant in the Museum who
can speak anything but his native language is the man who
takes the money at the door. I always meant to ask Professor
Maspero, the director, if a knowledge of English is supposed
to have the same effect upon an Egyptian as an acquaintance
with Christianity has upon Chinese and Japanese servants.
Untrustworthiness is surely the reason for not employing
English-speaking attendants in a country, under English
administration, for a museum where nine visitors out of ten
do or can speak English. The only other shortcoming is the
want of adequate labelling and cataloguing. There is a most
interesting catalogue, but it has not been brought up to date,
and has a woeful want of lucidity in its arrangement : it is
only by the merest fluke that you could ever find your place
in it ; it might have been easier to find your way about in the
labyrinth of Crete, where the Mijiotatir was kept ; and why
arc only the most important objects labelled? Everything is
labelled at the British Museum and the Louvre.
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