In the second place, a museum is a storehouse for historical documents such as papyri and ostraca, and in this respect it is simply to be regarded as a kind of public library, capable of unlimited and perfectly legitimate expansion. Such objects are not often found by robbers in the tombs which they have violated, nor are they snatched from temples to which they belong. They are usually discovered accidentally, and in a manner which precludes any possibility of their actual position having much significance. The immediate purchase, for example, by museum agents of the Tell el Amarna tablets--the correspondence of a great Pharaoh--which had been discovered by accident, and would perhaps have been destroyed, was most wise. In the third place, a museum is a permanent exhibition for the instruction of the public, and for the enlightenment of students desirous of obtaining comparative knowledge in any 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 without thought of the consequences. 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 by fair means or foul as large a number as possible of valuable masterpieces. In reality that is a very secondary matter. His first business, if he be an Egyptologist, is to see that Egyptian masterpieces remain _in situ_ so far as is practicable; and his next is to save what has irrevocably strayed from straying further. If the result of this policy be a poor collection, then he must devote so much the more time and money to obtaining facsimiles and reproductions. 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, reliefs, 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 certainly not for the benefit of the general public. It is almost solely for the benefit of the student and scholar who cannot, or will not, go to Egypt. Soon it comes to be the curator’s pride to observe that _savants_ are hastening to his museum to make their studies. His civic conceit is tickled by the spectacle of Egyptologists travelling long distances to take notes in his metropolitan museum.