The tablet from Thebes marked 593 is that of a judge and his wife, and is dedicated to Osiris and Anup. Hereon, the lotus flower is represented, with corn and bread. The next tablet (594) is one in the shape of an altar of libations, and is dedicated to Amenophis I. and the queen Aahmes-Nefer-Ari. It is ornamented with representations of various foods, including vases of figs. In this neighbourhood are a few more tablets, including one on which are jars, water-fowl, and bread cakes, (596) and a fragment upon which the head of a king is traceable, marked 595. The visitor should also notice now the two early Saracenic tombstones presented by Dr. Bowring. Having examined these, the more remarkable of the sepulchral tablets, or tombstones of the ancient Egyptians, the visitor, still lingering amid the funereal relics of long ages ago, should turn to the
Egyptian sepulchral vases.
As we explained when the visitor was in the Egyptian room, better known as the Mummy room, up stairs, in the course of his second visit, the ancient Egyptians, when they embalmed their dead, extracted the viscera, and deposited them, apart from the body, in four vases, over which the genii of the dead severally presided. Thus every mummy had, properly, four sepulchral vases; and the collection arranged in the saloon amply illustrates the varieties of ornament expended upon them. As the visitor has probably forgotten the particular parts assigned separately to the genii, it may be well to repeat here that Amset (who is human-headed,) had the stomach and large intestines under his especial protection Tuautmutf with his jackal-head presided over the heart and lungs; Kebhsnuf, with the fierce head of the widely worshipped hawk, took the gall, bladder, and liver, in charge; while the baboon-headed Hapi reserved to himself the care of the small intestines. There does not appear to have been any supernatural protector of the brains, which, as we have noticed, were drawn through the nose by the embalmer. These vases are of the most ancient times, chiefly before the advent of Alexander, after which event the people began to enclose the entrails of their dead