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these being joined by new comers, the city of Fosțâț at length arose. It was enlarged by Ahmed ibn Tulûn, who built a mosque there; by Khamarûyeh, who built a palace there; but when the Fâțimite Khalif Mu'izz conquered Egypt (A.D. 969), he removed the seat of his government from there, and founded Masr el-Kâhira, "Maṣr the Victorious," near Fosțâț. Fosțâț, which was also known by the name of Mașr, was henceforth called Maṣr el-'Atîka. During the reign of Salâḥeddîn the city was surrounded with walls and the citadel was built. Sulțân after Sulțân added handsome buildings to the town, and though it suffered from plagues and fires, it gained the reputation of being one of the most beautiful capitals in the Muḥammedan empire. In 1517 it was captured by Selim I., and Egypt became a pashalik of the Turkish empire, and remained so until its conquest by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1798. Cairo was occupied by Muḥammad 'Ali in 1805, and the massacre of the Mamelukes took place March 1, 1811.

THE MUSEUM AT GÎZEH.

The Egyptian antiquities which are now exhibited at Gizeh were, until the end of 1889, preserved at Bûlâk, where they occupied the site of the old post-office. The founding of the Bûlâķ museum is due to the energy and perseverance of Auguste Ferdinand Mariette. This distinguished Frenchman was born at Boulogne-sur-Mer on February 11th, 1821. His ancestors were not unknown in the literary world. He was educated at Boulogne, and was made professor there when he was twenty years of age. He seems to have tried his hand at various professions, and to have studied archæological matters whenever he had a little leisure. His attention was first drawn to the study of Egyptian archæology by the examination of a collection of Egyptian antiquities which had been made by Vivant

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Denon, one of the artists attached to the French Expedition in Egypt. Soon after this he wrote a paper on the list of kings which was found at Karnak and brought to Paris by Prisse, and sent it to Charles Lenormant. This gentleman, together with Maury, de Saulcy and Longpérier, advised him to come to Paris, where he soon obtained an appointment on the staff of the Louvre. As the salary paid to the young man was not sufficient to keep him, he resolved to ask the French Government to provide him with the necessary funds to go to Egypt, where he wished to try his fortune. The plea urged by him was that he wished to study the Coptic language and literature in the convents of Egypt, and with his application for funds he sent in a treatise which he had drawn up on Coptic matters. The petition was favourably received, and he set out for Egypt in the summer of 1850. Having arrived in Egypt, he found that it was not easy to obtain access to the libraries of the convents, for the Patriarch had insisted that they should be carefully guarded from strangers. While at Sakkârah, one day he discovered by accident a sphinx, which mentioned the names of Osiris-Hâpi or Serapis, similar to one that he had seen at Cairo. He remembered that the Serapeum at Memphis was described by ancient authors as standing on a sandy plain, and he believed that he had really found the spot where it stood and its ruins. He obtained labourers and set to work to dig, and discovered about one hundred and fifty sphinxes and two chapels; these objects and many other indications caused him to believe that he had actually found the Serapeum. The excavations were stopped for a short time, but were recommenced after a sum of money had been voted by the French Government. At the end of 1851 Mariette entered the Serapeum, and found there sixty-four Apis bulls, stelæ, etc., etc. As the dates when the bulls were placed in the Serapeum were stated, they afforded a

valuable help in fixing the chronology of Egypt as far back as the XVIIIth dynasty. In 1853 he discovered a granite temple near Gizeh ; and shortly afterwards he was appointed Assistant-Curator at the Louvre. In 1858 he was created Bey by Sa'id Pasha, and the foundation of an Egyptian museum at Bûlâk was entrusted to him. About the same time he began a large series of excavations in several places at once, and the scene of his labours extended from one end of Egypt to the other. At Abydos he cleared out the temple of Seti I., two temples of Rameses II., and a large number of tombs; at Denderah, a temple of Hathor; at Thebes he removed whole villages and mountains of earth from the temples at Karnak, Medînet-Habu and Dêr el-Bahari; and at Edfu he removed from the roof of the temple a village of huts and cleared out its interior. He was the author of several large works in which he gave accounts of his different labours, and published fac-similes of the texts on the monuments which he had discovered. He died at Cairo on January 17th, 1881, and was entombed in a sarcophagus which stood in the court-yard of Bûlâķ Museum; his remains were removed to Gizeh with the antiquities of the Museum. He was succeeded as Director in turn been succeeded by

by M. Maspero, who has M. Grébaut.

The national Egyptian collection at Gizeh surpasses every other collection in the world, by reason of the number of the monuments in it which were made during the first six dynasties, and by reason of the fact that the places from which the greater number of the antiquities come are well ascertained. Here may be seen stelæ of nobles who lived during the IIIrd dynasty; of Ptah-hetep of the Vth dynasty; monuments which belong to the little-known period during which the kings of the VIIth to the XIth dynasty reigned; a stele of the Theban king Åntefāa (XIth dynasty); and a number of sphinxes and other objects

which Mariette thought were executed under the rule of the Hyksos kings. The statue of Chephren, the "Shekh elBeled," the jewellery of Queen Аah-Ḥetep, the mother of Aḥmes, the first king of the XVIIIth dynasty; the Dêr elBahari mummies, the list of kings from Sakkârah, the Ethiopian monuments from Gebel Barkal, the stele of Canopus, and other such unique objects, have given the collection a world-wide reputation. The stele inscribed with

the decree of Canopus contains a hieroglyphic inscription with translations of it into demotic and Greek. The subjectmatter is a decree of a body of priests who met together at Canopus B.C. 238, in which they express their determination to establish a new order of priesthood in the name of the reigning king Ptolemy III. Euergetes I., in recognition of the many benefits which he had conferred upon the country of Egypt; they also decide to erect statues of the dead princess Berenice, and to put up copies of this trilingual inscription inscribed on bronze slabs in every temple of the first and second rank. This stone is as valuable as remarkable, for the inscriptions prove beyond all doubt that the method of decipherment employed by Champollion was

correct.

In former days the collection of scarabs at Bûlâk was valuable and nearly complete.

Among the papyri is one, of great value, which is inscribed with a work written by a scribe called Ani; containing advice to his son Chonsu-hetep as to judicious behaviour in all the various scenes of life. In it he exhorts him to avoid every vice and excess in anything, to love and cherish his mother, not to cause her pain by any unwise action, and to act as she would wish; to be submissive to his superiors and kind to his inferiors; to behave with modesty and due regard to the feelings of others; and to remember that death will come. The

work has much in common with the Maxims of Ptaḥ-hetep* and the Book of Proverbs. Another papyrus of great value is the fragment which treats of the geography of the Fayûm and Lake Moeris. With the arrival of the Dêr el-Bahari mummies there came some important copies of the Book of the Dead belonging to the best period of the Theban recension of that interesting work. It is much to be wished that the Administration of the Museum would publish from time to time fac-similes of the most important inscriptions which are found, and if they could be accompanied with translations or summaries of their contents the science of Egyptology would be much advanced. It is understood that a scientific classification of all the objects in the Museum according to the period to which they belong is in contemplation; if this is ever carried out the Museum will become a valuable school for students of Egyptian archæology.

It had long been felt by scholars and others that the old buildings at Bûlâk, where such valuable antiquities were stored, were quite inadequate to the wants of the Egyptian collection. There was no room whatever for expansion, and each year the danger caused by the inundation grew more serious; in the year 1878 the Nile waters actually entered the Museum. As the whole neighbourhood round about was filled with granaries and warehouses packed with inflammable matter, the need for removing the collection to a larger and a safer place became very pressing. At the end of 1888 it was definitely decided by the authorities to remove the antiquities from Bûlâk to the palace at Gizeh. The work was begun in 1889, and was continued throughout the summer and autumn of that year; the opening of the new Museum to visitors took place on January 12, 1890.

* The maxims of Ptaḥ-hetep are inscribed upon the Prisse papyrus, which was written about B.C. 2500; they were composed during the reign of Assa, the eighth king of the Vth dynasty, about B.C. 3366.

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