Italy Travel And Hotel Guide

The Museo Egizio , founded in the nineteenth century by Gregory XVI, isn’t one of the Vatican’s highlights. It has some vividly painted mummy cases (and two mummies), along with canopi, the alabaster vessels into which the entrails of the deceased were placed. There is also a partial reconstruction of the Temple of Serapis from Hadrian’s Villa near Tivoli, along with another statue of his lover, Antinous, who drowned close to the original temple in Egypt and so inspired Adrian to build his replica. The Egyptian-style statues in shiny black basalt next door to the mummies were also found in Tivoli, and are also Roman imitations, although Adrian collected some original Egyptian bits and pieces too, some of which are housed in the room which curves around the niche containing the pinecone - various Egyptian deities including the laughing fat ogre, Bes. The next rooms contain Egyptian bronzes from the late pharaonic period and primeval days of the Roman Empire, including a group of items from the cult of Isis which became favourite in Rome itself. There is also, beyond here, a series of rooms with clay tablets inscribed in cuneiform writing from Mesopotamia, and Assyrian, Sumerian and Persian bas-reliefs on stone tablets.