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EGYPTIAN ANTIQUITIES. 
[upper 
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 H.R.H. the Prince of Wales, the Duke of Nor- 
thumberland, Sir Gardner Wilkinson, and other travellers in 
Egjrpt. 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 buriah 
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 diurnal 
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 prin- 
cipally votive ; whilst the small figures in gold, porcelain, 
and other materials, were worn as amulets, employed in 
private worship, or attached to the mummies of the dead. 
The upper row in the Cases contains the larger figures, the 
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 : — 
Cases 1, 2. Amenra (Jupiter), the principal deity of Thebes ; Ea 
(The Sun), the god worshipped at Heliopolis, or On; Phtah (Vulcan), 
the divinity of Memphis ; the goddess Sekhet or Bast (Buhastis) ; and 
Ncith (Minerva), the goddess of Sais, whence her worship is supposed 
to have been carried to Athens. Cases 3-5. Thoth (Mercury), the god 
