n
attached to hold the pen case; seals of various kinds with impressions
of bulls, jackals, and hieroglyphics; portion of a calendar on stone;
and fragments of Egyptian writing on stone, and chiefly from tombs.
These fragments illustrative of the Egyptian character are continued
in the first two divisions of the cases marked 40, 41, including a
panel and stud from an ebony box inscribed with the titles of
Amenophis III. and his daughter; and a fragment in ebony, with an
inscribed dedication to Anubis. Among the miscellaneous objects also
in these divisions are various boxes in wood, papyrus, one veneered
with white and red ivory, some inscribed with names; and one with a
pyramidal cover, veneered with ivory and ornamented with figures and
birds. The next or third division is filled with varieties of Egyptian
spoons. Some of these are curious. They are chiefly of wood; but some
are of ivory. Among them are wooden spoons, shovel, egg and
cartouche-shaped; one with the handle carved in the shape of lotus
flowers; one with a moveable cover from Memphis; one with the handle
representing a gazelle, and within fish demolishing a water plant,
from Thebes; one in the shape of a fish; one circular, with a lotus
handle and a hawk cynocephalus on its edge; one with the form of a
fish for a bowl, and a fox seizing the fish for a handle; and others
equally curious in point of design. The last, or fourth division of
the case is full of ancient Egyptian building materials, including
fragments of painted plaster; stamps for bricks; palm-fibre brushes
for colouring walls, and smoothing tools.

EGYPTIAN TOOLS

are disposed through the two cases (42, 43) which the visitor should
now examine. In the first division are some palm-leaf baskets; wooden
mallets, one found in the masonry of the great pyramid at Abooseir;
and staves; in the second division a large variety of curious tools is
exhibited, including Egyptian saws, bradawls, chisels, an adze, axe
blades, knives of bronze, generally inscribed with hieroglyphics,
hones, bronze nails; mysterious bronze tools, the use of which is
unknown, all interesting to those who are in any way interested in the
history of the wonderful people who inhabited the valley of the Nile,
and wielded these tools there, when our island was an untilled desert.
The third division of the case contains strange handles decorated with
the popular lotus flower, fragments of an ivory gorget, with figures
of various