orientalcairocit00sladuoft

268 Oriental Cairo
and furniture of Egyptian everyday life, which were many of
them so very like our own, especially the stools and chairs ;
the Pharaohs sat up like white men they ; did not squat like
Orientals. Of charms, and bead necklaces, and scarabs there
are, of course, no end. I have already remarked the fact that
numbers of the scarabs in the Museum, taken out of tombs by
antiquaries themselves, and otherwise to be recognised as
genuine by experts, appear to the untutored eye coarse, ugly,
modern imitations: it is impossible to judge a scarab unless
you are an expert.
Unfortunately I have never seen scarabs offered for sale in
that most delightful part of the Museum, the Salle de Vente.
Here the Director has exposed for sale (the proceeds of which
go to help the fund for excavation) all the antiquities which
the Museum does not wish to keep, because it has sufficient
specimens of them. Whenever I went into the Museum,
I made a point of visiting the Salle de Vente to see if there
were any fresh bargains. One day I found that they had
more than a hundred of the little glazed pottery gods an inch
or two high, for which I had been looking in vain from the
first day that I entered the Museum. I bought them all ex-
cept ten. There are always necklaces of mummy-beads for
sale, and the little clay Ushapti images which were buried
with people, little statues of clay, bronze, and wood from two
inches to two feet high ; mummy
cases ; canopic vases ; silver
coins, chiefly of Alexander the Great ; and so on. The
museum prices are moderate, and it goes without saying that
every object sold is genuine. The Museum of Antiquities is
one of the most delightful places in Cairo.
The Arab Museum, which is housed in a fine new
building in the Saracenic style, near the Governorat, cannot
be called so interesting as the Museum of Egyptian
Antiquities, nor is it very extensive. Its principal glory is
its collection of crystal mosque lamps of the Middle Ages.
It is said to be the finest collection of old Moslem glass
in existence ; and these antique crystal lamps, with their
blue and gold inscriptions, which swung in the mosques of
Cairo with their value unrecognised, almost unheeded, are