How to See the British Museum in Four VisitsJerrold, Blanchard
History
How to See the British Museum in Four Visits
Jerrold, Blanchard
British Museum
In the first two divisions, the remarkable objects are various,
bronze buckets with ornamental outlines of various deities and sacred
animals; a rectangular bronze table, perforated to receive vessels;
bronze lamps, &c.; and in the third division the visitor should
certainly notice the two-staged stand of papyrus and cane from a
private tomb at Thebes, with trussed ducks and cakes of bread upon it;
baskets containing fruits, as figs, pomegranates, dates, cakes of
barley, &e. The fourth division contains some old agricultural
implements, including the fragments of a sickle found by Belzoni under
a statue at Karnak; a wooden pick-axe; an Egyptian hoe; a yoke of
acacia wood; eight steps of wood from a rope-ladder, and specimens of
palm-fibre rope.
Passing from these interesting relics of ancient manufacturing skill,
the visitor will next arrive before two cases (36, 37) of Egyptian
fragments of tombs, and weapons of war, illustrating the means of
killing and the fashion of burial. In the first division are various
goms, or Egyptian sceptres and staffs, some of ebony and some of wood;
and the blade of a war-axe, with the name of Thothmes III. inscribed
upon it. A variety of offensive weapons are arranged in the second
division, including bronze war-axes, one with a hollow silver handle;
daggers; bows and arrows, the arrows pointed with triangular bronze
heads, and fragments of flint-arrow-heads; fowling-sticks; handsome
bronze bladed knives, with agate and other handles, some worked with
gold, &c. The fragments in the third division include a knotted rope;
a piked club; wooden fan handles; wooden paddles carved with heads of
jackals; a mast for the model of a boat; and in the fourth division
are a curious cuirass and helmet, from the tombs of Manfaloot,
fashioned from a crocodile skin. At this point is another intermediate
case containing a mummy, coffin, and boards. The coffin is shaped like
a mummy, with a green face, and Netpe, between Isis and Nephthys on
the breast, with the deceased being introduced to the deities, among
whom he is to be divided by Thoth. This coffin was presented to the
Museum by George III.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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