126 Report of a Journey Around the World. 



the Nile took us to the Nilometer, and we found that modern science 

 had put up a far simpler but more exact meter near by on the island 

 shore. Not far from the traditional site of the finding of the infant 

 Moses is the old Ptolemaic meter, still doing its intended work. 



The new Egyptian Museum is a distinct disappointment. 

 Egyptian collections are apt to be rather disorderly, whatever 

 country they are in, and here we looked for a fair story of Egypt's 

 growth and civilization illustrated with authentic objects — we 

 could not even find a papyrus, for the keeper was away and not a 

 common specimen left outside the safe! We could learn more 

 about Egypt in the British Museum, or in Turin, or in Leyden. 

 We foolishly imagined that in such a vast museum, with such a 

 wealth of material, an architectural student could see the various 

 columns devised by the old Egyptian architect side by side, at 

 least in cast for comparison; no such thing. The visitor must 

 make his own chronological comparison by painful stud)' of labels, 

 sometimes misplaced. The small rooms of the former Gizeh palace 

 had some advantage in the grouping of things that belong together. 

 The art of Egypt was left in the hands of the French, while the 

 wise Englishman carefully took the government into his own hands. 

 Frenchmen were believed to be, as a rule, of an artistic tempera- 

 ment, but surely those who had charge of the arrangement and 

 decoration of this great museum were exceptions to the supposed 

 rule. When a red syenite statue is placed against a background 

 of Pompeiau red, either the decorators or the director must be criti- 

 cised. Although the building is a new one some of the stone floors 

 are in ruins already, doubtless owing to careless moving of the very 

 massive statues, and yet one cannot help thinking that proper pre- 

 cautions would have availed for the protection of the floor. We 

 have so many museums throughout Europe and America where 

 scientific arrangement is wedded to a true artistic taste that when 

 one comes upon a museum of a different quality the contrast seems 

 more important than perhaps it should. Perchance this greatest of 

 Egyptian collections will some day pay a little tribute to beauty while 

 offering so much to science. The Khedivial Museum showed won- 

 drous beauty in some of the manuscript copies of the Koran. 



The obelisk at Heliopolis, the sole remaining relic of the an- 

 cient temple of the Sun, where Potiphera, priest of On and better 

 known to us as father-in-law of Moses, once officiated, we found 



[274] 



