y one branch of their
work, and for this purpose it should be well supplied not so much with
original antiquities as with casts, facsimiles, models, and
reproductions of all sorts.

To be a serviceable exhibition both for the student and the public a
museum does not need to possess only original antiquities. On the
contrary, as a repository for stray objects, a museum is not to be
expected to have a complete series of original antiquities in any
class, nor is it the business of the curator to attempt to fill up the
gaps by purchase, except in special cases. To do so is to encourage the
straying of other objects. The curator so often labours under the
delusion that it is his first business to collect together as large a
number as possible of valuable masterpieces. In reality that is a very
secondary matter. His first business, if he is an Egyptologist, is to
see that Egyptian masterpieces remain in Egypt so far as is practicable;
and his next is to save what has irrevocably strayed from straying
further. If the result of this policy is a poor collection, then he must
devote so much the more time and money to obtaining facsimiles and
reproductions. The keeper of a home for lost dogs does not search the
city for a collie with red spots to complete his series of collies, or
for a peculiarly elongated dachshund to head his procession of those
animals. The fewer dogs he has got the better he is pleased, since this
is an indication that a larger number are in safe keeping in their
homes. The home of Egyptian antiquities is Egypt, a fact which will
become more and more realised as travelling is facilitated.

But the curator generally has the insatiable appetite of the collector.
The authorities of one museum bid vigorously against those of another at
the auction which constantly goes on in the shops of the dealers in
antiquities. They pay huge prices for original statues, vases, or
sarcophagi: prices which would procure for them the finest series of
casts or facsimiles, or would give them valuable additions to their
legitimate collection of papyri. And what is it all for? It is not for
the benefit of the general public, who could not tell the difference
between a genuine antiquity and a forgery or reproduction, and who would
be perfectly satisfied with the ordinary, miscellaneous collection of
minor antiquities. It is not for that class of Egyptologist which
endeavours to study Egyptian antiquities in Egypt. It is almost solel