Egyptian Collections. The larger objects are arranged chronologically (from north to south) on the ground-floor. The mummies and smaller objects are on the first floor.
The art of the ancient Egyptians is almost entirely either religious or sepulchral. Their religion seems to have been a codification of a multitude of local nature-cults; in consequence, the gods and goddesses of the sun, the day, the night, etc., appear under many forms and names, often represented by a sacred animal or symbol. Believing that the preservation of the body was essential to the immortality of the soul, they built their monuments for permanence, and, aided by the hard stone and the dry climate of the country, achieved it. Their sculpture always retained the architectural quality and sacred convention which Greek sculpture lost in the 5th century. The national genius was clearly mechanical; in spite of their fairly high level of social civilization, they produced no literature worth mentioning; but their art, circumscribed as it is by priestly tradition, has great dignity and proportion. [For specimens of their architecture, see the photographs on screens in the North Egyptian Gallery.]
North Egyptian Vestibule. The objects here represent for the most part the 1st-11th Dynasties (4400-2466 B.C.) that make up the Ancient Empire. Art is already developed; indeed, it has naturalism, which it subsequently lost in becoming conventionalized. No. 35 (like No. 33 in the next room) is a figure as life-like as any produced by Egyptian artists. More primitive are the small seated figures, 3 and 14. The palm leaf column in the centre, and the 'false doors' of tombs (by the north wall and exit), covered with hieroglyphs, have already fine proportions. On the south wall are sculptured tablets, showing scenes of sacrifice. The reliefs, unlike Greek reliefs, are cut into the stone and rounded at the outlines only, the depth of the incision and the modelling being as slight as possible. Nos. 10-12. Fragments of casing-stones of the Great Pyramid (4th Dynasty) and of details of the Sphinx (perhaps earlier). Over the east door is a cast of one of the four colossal heads of Rameses II., cut in the rock face of the cave-temple at Abu-Simbel.
