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266 Oriental Cairo
pride of the Museum is the famous Cow of Hathor transported
here from Der-cl-Bahar at Thebes, with the gaily coloured
shrine in which it was found a few years ago. For the
combination of colour, condition, and antiquity this statue is
almost unrivalled.
But one need not particularise much, for the charm of the
Cairo Museum is general ; it enables you to understand the
life of Ancient Egypt by i well-arranged collection of all the
objects used by the Ancient Egyptians in their everyday
life. There is even one—the only one known to be in exist-
ence—of the incense-burners shaped like tobacco pipes,
which figure in the great ceremonial pictures of the tombs.
The Museum is a museum of tombs—most of our knowledge
of Ancient Egypt is derived from the tombs. Accordingly
we have here sculptured tombs and their false doors, for it was
the instinct of the Ancient Egyptian to conceal the entrance
to his tomb. We have sarcophagi of stone, sarcophagi of
plain carved wood, and the sarcophagi we know best, of wood
brilliantly gilt, and painted in the likeness of the deceased.
There are mummies innumerable in all stages of being
stripped ; there are the alabaster canopic jars which received
the viscera of the deceased for separate interment, as the
viscera of dead Popes are interred to this very day ; and
there is elaborate furniture which went into the sepulchres of
the great. Of this there are superb exhibits, unequalled else-
where, for in the sepulchre of the mother of Akhnaton, the
heretic Pharaoh, opened at the expense of an American
gentleman a year or two ago, were discovered a chariot,
and beds, and state chairs, and all the smaller paraphernalia,
richly plated with gold, and these have been deposited in the
Cairo Museum.
The mummies here are of unusual] interest, for there are
among them two of pLgypt's greatest kings—Seti I. and
Rameses II., with their high Roman noses and firm, delicately
chiselled chins and lips so well preserved that it takes little
effort to picture them in the flesh.
There was a period in Egypt when the deceased was provided
with presentments or typifications of what he would