How to See the British Museum in Four VisitsJerrold, Blanchard
History
How to See the British Museum in Four Visits
Jerrold, Blanchard
British Museum
The names of several royal ladies have been deciphered from the
inscriptions, which are the addresses of deities. The black granite
chest of a sarcophagus, numbered 23, is that of a royal scribe named
Hapimen. Here the well-known figures of the Amenti, the embalmer
Anubis, and other deities and symbols, will remind the visitor of the
Egyptian room up stairs, with its strange green little images of
figures half human and half bestial. Round the interior are the
deities to whom the various parts of the human body were severally
dedicated. Since this massive granite was the coffin of Hapimen, it
has been known to the Turks as the "Lover's Fountain," and used by
them as a cistern. The Syenite sarcophagus of a standard-bearer, is
marked 18. The chest of a royal sarcophagus that was taken from the
mosque of St. Athanasius at Alexandria, and which contained the mummy
of a king of the twenty-eighth dynasty, is marked number 10. On the
exterior, the Sun is represented, attended by appropriate deities
travelling through the hours of the day; and on the interior the
visitor will recognise the quaint symbolic forms of the usual
sepulchral gods and goddesses. The two remaining sarcophagi are those
of a scribe and priest of the acropolis of Memphis, and a bard. That
of the former, marked 3, is covered with the figures of Egyptian
divinities and inscriptions to the deceased; that of the latter, in
arragonite, is in the form of a mummy, like those first examined by
the visitor. This coffin has five distinct lines of hieroglyphics
engraved down the front, expressing a chapter of the funeral ritual:
and the face bears evidence of having been gilt.
Having sufficiently examined these massive coffins, upon which the
proudest undertaker of modern times must look humbly, and deplore the
decline of his business as an art, the visitor should at once turn to
other specimens of the sepulchral art of the ancient Egyptians. Of
these, the most interesting are the sepulchral tablets, which are
literally
ANCIENT EGYPTIAN TOMBSTONES.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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