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The Museums of Cairo 267
require to use, if he were still a man in the future state. The
Cairo Museum is rich in these, and in the little images of the
gods, the scarabs, the jewels, the signs of life and power that
were buried with him.
In the richly gilt mummy cases, which can only have
represented the features of the deceased conventionally,
though they are very human and lifelike, the Museum
abounds. It also has considerable numbers of pictures of
Egyptians of the Roman period, a mild-eyed effeminate
people, not unlike the Pompeians, But they are not as
truthful as the little figures, in painted wood, of scribes and
fellaJiin which line the glass cases down below. Those might
be kodaks of living people.
There is a fine collection of the jewels of ancient queens
and princesses, some of them marvellously modern in type,
all of them marvellously fresh. The Ancient Egyptians
excelled in the art of enamelling on gold ; they also manu-
factured false gems ; but of gems there are few in these cases,
the jewels consisting chiefly of gold and enamels, and the
less valuable opaque stones.
The Christian exhibits of the Museum belonging to Roman
times are less interesting and mostly of very inferior workmanship,
but they are highly valuable from the point of view
of religious history, though one would give them all for that
breathing, moving, sunburnt statue of Thi, in its stiff white
petticoat, taken from the sanctuary of his stately tomb at
Memphis, which is one of the treasure-houses of Egyptian
sculpture. The Museum is rich in altars of libation and statues
of the gods. The pick of Monsieur Le Grain's great find of
statues at Karnak had been brought here. The two long
entrance galleries below are filled with magnificent sarco-
phagi ; the two long galleries above them are lined with
gorgeous gold mummy cases. But these are not so interest-
ing to me as the smaller rooms, which contain the little
bronze statues of the gods, the tiny glazed pottery statues of
the gods in which the Egyptians excelled, and the papyri
decorated with miniature pictures like the manuscripts of the
Middle Ages ; and the long gallery filled with the implements