amented
handles. The specimens in this case, which have lost their lustre
under centuries of rust, include one with a lotus handle, ornamented
with the Egyptian goddess of beauty, Athor; one with a tress of hair
as a design for the handle: and others ornamented with the head of the
much reverenced hawk. The pins are in bronze and wood, and were used
by the Egyptian ladies either to bind the hair or to apply the sthem
to the eyelids. The combs show a double row of teeth, and are of wood.
The shoes and sandals are of various kinds, but the greatest variety
of these articles is deposited in the fourth division of the cases.
These are made of palm leaves, wood, and papyrus: those with
high-peaked toes are the most ancient, having been worn in the
eighteenth dynasty, about fourteen centuries before our era.

The nine following cases (22-32) are devoted to the vases and other
domestic vessels of the Egyptians; an intervening case (27) being
filled with the cedar coffin of a prophet priest of Amoun in Thebes,
elaborately ornamented with various religious symbols. Some of the
vases are inscribed with royal names of early dynasties, proving their
great antiquity: some of the most elegant dating so far back as
fourteen centuries before our era. These specimens of ancient Egyptian
workmanship suggest a state of high artistic refinement of a remoter
antiquity than the Grecian, wrecks of which lie in the Elgin and other
saloons on the basement of the museum. Of the large collection here
arranged the visitor will only care to notice the more remarkable
specimens. The uses to which these cups and bowls and vases were put,
may be inferred partly from their shapes, and partly from the material
of which they were made; those of a costly kind being probably the
receptacles of the unguents with which the ancient Egyptians of both
sexes anointed their persons after the bath; and the larger and less
costly varieties being the wine vases, &c, in common use. Two ancient
vases are in the first division of the case (22, 23) one with the name
of a king before the twelfth dynasty, and the more modern one of the
twenty-fifth dynasty. In the second division the visitor should notice
the small aragonite vases, resembling wine-glasses; in the third case
a slab, upon which are six vases of various shapes in calcareous
stone; in the fourth a vase from Lower Egypt, with the quantity it
holds inscribed upon it. In the next five cases, 24-27 are filled wit