To TRANSACTIONS OF THE [APRIL 13, 



sentences, with all that they include in our present usage, and 

 many rhetorical figures appear in the Hieroglyphic, while the 

 Hieratic and Demotic present the easy and graceful style of our 

 modern languages. Foremost among writers of that period 

 were Enna, Qagabu and the poet Pentaiir, the Homer of 

 Egyptian poetry. 



While the museums of the Old World are rich in monu- 

 ments and hold the key to the history of Egypt, only those in 

 our country cmII for a remark in this paper. New York of 

 course holds first rank, with its obelisk in Central Park and 

 the excellent collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

 Most of the objects in the Museum have to do with the dead, 

 for instance : the mummies, the canopic vases surmounted by 

 the head of an animal, man or bird and containing the bowels 

 of the deceased, the small charms placed inside the mummy 

 case, the small brown, bluish or green statuettes in the form 

 of a mummy, called ushabti, symbolical representations of the 

 person to whom they were given and bearing his name, small 

 funeral stele, bricks of the time of Thothmes HI. and many 

 other objects quite impossible to enumerate here. Then there 

 is in New York the famous Abbott collection, (the largest in 

 the country, surpassing in many respects some European col- 

 lections,) at the New York Historical Society, and the collection 

 of Columbia College. Johns Hopkins University possesses, 

 some fine specimens of statuettes, scarabsei, precious rings of 

 later dynasties and a few excellent stele. Lafayette College 

 has the important Papyrus Gen. Stone, while Boston and; 

 Chicago boast of no small collections. Besides these there are 

 thousands of Egyptiafi monuments scattered over our country, 

 which are for the most part in private hands, and are unfortu- 

 nately only occasionally heard of by Egyptologists. 



I add an inscription on the following page to serve as 

 specimpn of a," Egyptian stele (published, for the first time !). 



