Dr. Lee's Egyptian rarities; as otherwise they would clash with my notanda. The learned Doctor commenced this collection while Travelling Bachelor from the University of Cambridge, under the conviction of its importance to history, chronology, and every branch of philological knowledge; to the furtherance of which he has most liberally contributed.

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Numbers 81 and 82 of the said Catalogue are two figures of sycamorewood, one 7 inches the other 7 inches in height: it is there mentioned that I presented them to the Hartwell Museum, but the account omits to state that they were given me by Sig. Belzoni, the zealous pioneer of Egyptian explorers. They formed part of a heap which was found in the chamber of the tomb of Oimenephtha I., in the sacred valley Beban al Malûk, who is presumed to have died B.C. 1190; but they are too thickly smudged with bitumen for a satisfactory insight of their pictorial characteristics: bushels of the said "heap" were used by the sharp-set explorers as fire-wood, and the hidden stores of many ages were exhumed for cookery purposes. No. 89, which I brought from Egypt, is the figure of a mummified lady in hard wood, probably acacia, 9 inches high, with one line of hieroglyphics down the front; and, though not of the best work, it is decorated with the black, yellow, red, and white pigments so well known for durability. The artists were very choice of their materials, as may be inferred from the pallet of the hierogrammat, or sacred scribe, in this museum (No. 371), which has circular depressions for the colours, and a long cavity for the pens or brushes.

These vestiges of Pharaonic times forcibly recall to mind an incident in my own span of life. When my ship arrived in England from the Mediterranean, in 1820, I found that Belzoni had returned from Egypt, and my old messmate Captain George Francis Lyon had recently arrived from Mourzuk in Africa, whither I had been instrumental to his being sent. On hearing of my proposal that a shore-party should proceed along the margin of the Greater Syrtis, and into the Cyrenaica, while the ship under my command coasted the same region, they both very handsomely volunteered to accompany me; and one afternoon I left

the Admiralty under a pleasing conviction that our project was to be carried out. But, presto! the whole scene quickly changed-Belzoni was summarily supplanted by his former travelling companion Henry Beechey; and Lyon, despite of his Arabic fluency, his Mohammedism, and his constitutional seasoning, was sent with Parry into the Arctic Circle; while Lieut. Frederick Beechey, from the Polar seas, was appointed to accompany his brother on the trip over hot sands and deserts. Alas! the ostensible prime-movers of this unexpected change of dramatis persona-Lord Melville and Sir George Cockburn, together with the above-named individuals-have all long since passed away.

No. 126 of the same Catalogue is the figure of a dog-faced baboon, the emblem of Thoth and of Nubia, impressed on a specimen of hard porcelain coated with blue varnish, which I procured in Alexandria, and afterwards consigned to the Hartwell collection. The strange creature is represented in basso-relievo, sitting on the hieroglyphical symbol for the syllable MAI; and assuredly presents a queer object for worship, if we can believe there ever existed such bizarre adoration. But, though there are certain Egyptologists who talk glibly about a farrago of Egyptian divinities, animate and inanimate, natural and artificial, monkeys, dogs, cats, and less respectable deities, it seems more rational to deem them rather mere emblems of the moral virtues. (See Edes, pages 159 to 169.) Having had no small practice in talking through the medium of an interpreter, spokesman, dragoman, moonshie, trudgeman, or what not, I well know the ambiguities and errors fallen into by people ignorant of each other's language, religion, or philosophy; as with our early voyagers conversing among savages on abstruse topics by signs. Indeed it is doubtful from any transmitted evidence whether even the Greek writers on Egypt were conversant with the Egyptian tongue, or able to read the hieroglyphics.

The relic before us is, however, historically important, for on its other face is a single cartouch inclosing the characters which compose the nomen and prænomen of the renowned and glorious Rameses II., of whom more anon. He it was who sat for the great granite head now posited in the British Museum as

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"Young Memnon;" a head* for which a space was prepared in the Weymouth when that ship was being laden with the architectural and other spoils which I had collected at Leptis Magna, on the coast of Barbary.

The composite baboonia-cynocephalus before us being both interesting and curious, and in order that the cartoon should be open to all readers, I here give as faithful a representation of it as photography and xylography can supply:

Nos. 164 and 165 of the Lee Catalogue. Here a trifling error has been inadvertently made, from the similarity of rude sculptures in sycamore-wood, both 34 inches high, both having a hole drilled through their plinth as if for fixing on their respective mummy-cases, and each bearing the figure of a hawk with a human head; but No. 164, by the twisted beard under his chin, represents a lord of the creation; while No. 165 is decidedly, as Vivant Denon would have said, "une femme bien prononcée." Now the first of these is registered in the book as my gift to the collection, whereas it was the second which I brought from Egypt; and therefore, in any future reprint of that Catalogue, they must exchange places. In the meantime we may state that

*When this weighty mass was about to be embarked at Malta, a self-sufficient military officer drawled out-"Memnon, eh? And pray who was Memnon?" To which my friend and chief, Admiral Sir Charles Penrose, sarcastically replied-" You cannot have forgotten the famous Turkish Aga, you must have heard of Aga-memnon!" There was more of reproof than pun in this.

No. 165 is the human-headed hawk, a composite animal that typifies the sacred soul, as may be gathered, says Mr. Bonomi, "from the pictures on the walls of the tombs, and in the funereal papyri, where this figure is often represented as flying towards the face of the embalmed body to re-animate it." Round the neck a Nilometer appears, as if suspended by a cord-the emblem of stability -considered to signify that the soul of the defunct ought to be indued with fortitude and hope when about to enter the hallowed Hall of Judgment. This is one of the many instances in which may be traced the Egyptian belief of the final resurrection and the Immortality of the Soul; indeed, the distinct allusions to a future state in the pictorial documents deposited with their dead, and the costliness of the ornamentation of their tombs, make it certain that they considered a chief part of the business of life was to prepare for another existHere is the hierogrammatic icon, or metaphor:

ence.

No. 186. In the preceding figure the Nilometer is on the breast of the creature, and therefore is not seen in this drawing; but we now submit the shape of a very perfect one, representing the pillar with gradient levels of division, surmounted by the cap of Osiris, with horns, but no disc. As before said, this instrument was regarded at once symbolical of stability and strength, and perhaps of fertility; whence, in allusion to the House of Judgment, one or more of these charms are found in the cavity of the chest of an embalmed person, or wrapped up in the linen bandages which encircle the upper part of the body, to inspire fortitude. The specimen before us is rather larger than the generality of these emblems, and is in the highest state of conservation; it was presented to me by Consul-General Henry Salt, in 1822.

The actual Nilometer was a pillar sixteen cubits high, marked with graduated divisions for showing the rise of water in the River Nile during its overflowings; and thereby determine the amount of tribute which the land-proprietor would have to pay during the inundation. The obvious Greek meaning of the name would bring the contrivance, or at least its present denomination, down to the time of the Ptolemies; but the Arabian writers assert that it was first set up by Joseph during his regency. The present Mekkias (measure) was erected after the conquest of Egypt by the Arabs.

No. 193. The human eye, with certain appendages stamping it as the popular emblem of Osiris; probably significant of an all-seeing Providence, and, as such, connected with the idea of life, past and future, in the Egyptian mind. Moreover, it seems that it was worn as an amulet, to avert the dire effects of the widely-dreaded Evil Eye; and also to protect the wearer from