sts 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