Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 455: Volume 18, New Series, September 18, 1852Various
History
Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 455: Volume 18, New Series, September 18, 1852
Various
Periodicals
In a cross street named Colquitt Street, near a fashionable promenade
of Liverpool, will be found the rich, valuable, and interesting museum
which we are about briefly to describe. It is the property of Mr
Joseph Mayer, F.S.A., a townsman of Liverpool, esteemed as much for
his private worth as for his refined classical taste. This gentleman
has been long known as a collector; and by the purchase of an entire
gallery of antiquities, formed by one who travelled long in Egypt and
Nubia, and visited the remains of ancient Carthage, he became
possessed of a museum so extensive that his private residence could
not contain them, and so rare, that the public desired to know more
about them. With the view, therefore, of keeping them together, and
gratifying the many who longed to acquaint themselves with these
interesting relics of an interesting race, this house in Colquitt
Street has been appropriated. For the purpose of meeting the current
expenses of the exhibition, and enabling the proprietor to add to its
contents, a very trifling charge is made for admission, and a book is
kept for the autographs of the visitors.
The first room entered displays a large collection of Egyptian
_stelae_ and other monuments, while the outer cases and sarcophagi of
several mummies are placed in another apartment. The word _stela_
means merely a memorial pillar or tombstone; and in this room the
reflective mind will find much food for meditation. We have here the
first elements of all religion brought visibly before us in the
carvings--the recognition of a deity, and the belief in immortality.
More than one of these stelae has upon it the royal cartouch; one of
them has no fewer than four of these elliptical rings with
inscriptions, and two more from which the hieroglyphics have been
erased. This tells a tale, for in the age commemorated, it was a mark
of disgrace to have the name obliterated. Another stela contains the
jackal, or genius of the departed, with propitiatory offerings from
his friends. The curious will learn with interest, that another of
these monuments dates back to the time of Joseph. It has twice
engraved upon it the name Osortosen--perhaps the Pharaoh 'who gave him
to wife Asenath, the daughter of Potiphorah, priest of On,' and raised
the obelisk at Heliopolis, towns thought to be the same. Near to this
is another stela of great beauty, engraved in low relief and
cavo-relievo, coloured. It belongs to Manetho's sixth dynasty,
and is consequently very ancient. One still more so is in
the same collection: it is of the fourth dynasty of that
historian--consequently, of the time when the Pyramids were built. It
is beautifully executed in intaglio and relievo, with the surface
polished. These stelae, of which the collection is very rich, are
composed of various rocks--such as granite, syenite, limestone, the
travertino of the Italians, and sandstone.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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