which is the most northernly apartment or gallery of the western wing.
Here he will at once notice the rows of Sarcophagi, which are ranged
on either side of the central passage of the gallery. These colossal
outer-coffins contained the mummies of distinguished Egyptians. Along
the walls of the room are ranged the sepulchral tablets, or tombstones
of ancient Egyptians, and the inscriptions generally record the name
and age of a deceased person; and in some cases, points of domestic
history and pious sentences. Their dates range over a space of time
amounting to more than twenty centuries. Interspersed with these are
other sculptures, chiefly of Egyptian deities; but the attention of
the visitor will be probably attracted first to the

EGYPTIAN OUTER COFFINS.

The visitor, having reached the northern end of the Egyptian Saloon,
should turn to the south, and begin a minute examination of its
contents. The sarcophagi, or outer coffins of stone, in which the rich
ancient Egyptians deposited the embalmed bodies of their relations,
occupy the greater part of the ground space of the saloon. They are
massive shells, hewn from the solid rock, polished and engraved
skilfully with hieroglyphics, which, so far as the learned have been
able to decipher, record the exploits of the great men they contained.
Some of them are in the shape of common boxes with raised lids; while
in others, attempts to represent the features of the deceased, and a
rough outline of a mummy are apparent. These massive coffins, which
are upwards of three thousand years old, and are eloquent with the
mystic written language of that remote antiquity, deserve more than a
transient notice even from the unscientific visitor. Mummies were
found in most of these, proving their use. Some were discovered placed