Among the Egyptian antiquities in the British museum may also be mentioned the handle of a mirror in hippopotamus ivory; an ivory palette of about the same period; two ivory boxes, in the shape of water fowl; and a very remarkable figure or statuette, a woman, of perhaps the eleventh century B.C.; and, again, a very curious casket of considerable size but of much later date; probably of the first century of the Christian æra: Roman work and decoration. This was found at Memphis, and is made of ivory plaques laid upon a framework of wood. The plaques are incised with figures and coloured. The shape is oblong, with a sloping cover; it measures about twelve by ten inches. The use of ivory for ornament and the adapting it to works of art must have been known by the Egyptians from a most remote antiquity. There is a small ivory box in the Louvre, which is inscribed with a prænomen attributed to the fifth dynasty. Labarte, quoting De Rougé, mentions another of the sixth dynasty:—“On voit au musée Égyptien du Louvre une quantité d’objets d’os et d’ivoire. Ce sont de petits vases, des objets de toilette, des cuillers dont le manche est formé par une femme nue, et une boîte ornée d’une belle tête de gazelle. La pièce la plus curieuse est une autre boîte d’ivoire très-simple, mais d’une excessive antiquité, puisqu’elle porte la légende royale de Merien-ra, qui est placé vers la sixième dynastie.” Dr. Birch in a paper printed among the transactions of the Royal society, on two Egyptian cartouches found at Nimroud, refers to a tablet of the twelfth dynasty, which describes a figure whose “arms are to be made of precious stones, silver and gold, and the two hinder parts of ivory and ebony. In a tomb at Thebes record is made of a statue composed of ebony and ivory, with a collar of gold.” The date of the Egyptian statuette in the British museum and of numerous smaller objects in that and in the great foreign collections, such as spoons, bracelets, collars, boxes, &c., most of which are earlier than the twenty-fourth dynasty and long before the time of Cambyses, brings us to about the same period as the famous Assyrian ivories, which were found at Nineveh, and which are also preserved in the British museum.