555
 

THE EGYPTIAN MUSEUM AT GIZEH

The Khedivial collection of Egyptian antiquities, for¬
merly exhibited in the Museum at Btilak, is now arranged
in a large number of rooms in the Palace at Gizeh, a
building which is, in most ways, unsuitable for the purpose.
This edifice, which is pleasantly situated in spacious
grounds close to the river, was opened by H.H. the
Khedive on  January  12,   1890.

For many years the condition and arrangement of the
antiquities exhibited in the Bulak and Gizeh Museums
have been notorious subjects for complaint on the part of
the Egyptologist and the tourist. The Egyptologist could
obtain no trustworthy information about the antiquities
which he knew were being acquired j^ear by year, and the
tourist visited the collection time after time and winter
after winter, and went away on each occasion feeling that
nothing had been done to help him to understand the
importance of a number of objects, which guide-books and
experts told him were famous and of the greatest value
to the artist, ethnographer, philologist, and historian. That
marvellous man Mariette had gathered together from all
parts a series of unique specimens of Egyptian sculpture
and art of the earHest dynasties, and had, owing to the
parsimony of the Egyptian government, been obliged to
house them in the buildings of an old post-office at Bulak,
and thither, for several years, the curious of all nations bent
their steps. As his great excavations went on, the collection
at BMak became larger, until at last it was found necessary
to store cofhns, sarcophagi, mummies, stelae, stone statues,
etc., in the sheds attached to the buildings like boxes of
preserved meats in a grocer's shop. With the arrival of the
Der el-Bahari mummies and cofihns the crowding of objects
became greater,  for the civilized world demanded that a