8G 
DEPARTMENT OF ANTIQUITIES. 
[upper 
To the right, or South side, is the 
FIEST EGYPTIAN ROOM. 
In this, and in part of the next room, are placed the 
smaller antiquities of Egypt. Most of these have been disco- 
vered in tombs, and owe their remarkable preservation to the 
peculiar dryness of the climate of the country. They have 
been acquired mainly by purchases from the collections of 
M. Anastasi, Mr. Salt, Mr. Sams, and Mr. Lane, and by dona- 
tions from the Duke of Northumberland, Sir Gardner Wil- 
kinson, and other travellers in Egypt. The objects may be 
divided into three principal sections : — • 
1. Those relating to the religion of the Egyptians, such 
as representations of divinities, and sacred animals. 
2. Those relating to their civil and domestic life. 
3. Those relating to their death and burial. 
I. RELIGIOUS SECTION. 
The Egyptian Pantheon, which was very complex, compre- 
hended a large number of divinities, of which the most im- 
portant were connected with the sun in his annual or diuxnal 
course, and the lesser were his attendant satellites. The relative 
importance of the divinities depended in some measure on the 
power and wealth of the cities in which they were principally 
worshipped, each city having a distinct group, formed of the 
local God, his wife, and child, with occasionally a fourth divinity 
added. In the representations of the deities, their heads are 
generally exchanged for those of the animals sacred to them. 
The figures in Cases 1—11 are arranged simply as illustrations 
of mythology, and without reference to their original purpose. 
Those which are of wood and stone were found generally 
in tombs, and temples ; those of bronze and silver were prm- 
cipally votive ; whilst the small figures in gold, porcelain, and 
other materials, were either worn as amulets, or employed in 
private worsliip, or attached to the mummies of the dead. 
The upper row in the cases contains generally the figures in 
stone or wood, tlie next those in bronze, the third those in 
porcelain, and in the lowest are the larger figures in various 
materials. Among them may be noticed the following : — 
