Summary of accommodation for Egyptian Antiquities.
Summary of the Accommodation provided in the plan for Egyptian Antiquities:—
1. The large sculptures would gain Rooms III, IV, and VI, in lieu of the northern vestibule.
2. The inscribed tablets, which at present occupy the recesses of Rooms VII, VIII, IX, containing four hundred and twenty-two linear feet of wall-space, and the walls of the northern vestibule, containing about eighty feet, or altogether about five hundred and two feet, would share with the framed papyri and painted plaster friezes the walls of Rooms III, IV, V, VI, VIII, X, XI, XII, containing altogether about nine hundred and sixty feet.
3. The mummies, overcrowded in a room containing two thousand and fourteen square feet of available open space, and the coffins in the present ‘Egyptian Ante-room,’ would be arranged, with several table cases, in Rooms X and XII, containing altogether about four thousand and eighty square feet.
4. The small objects, now in wall-cases extending to two hundred and thirty-seven feet of linear measurement, and in three table-cases, would be arranged in wall-cases, extending to three hundred and eighty-three feet, and in several table-cases, of which the exact extent cannot be fixed.
The additional space here provided for large Egyptian sculptures is not so much needed for the present as is the case in some other series; but the greater comparative difficulty of moving objects so bulky makes it advisable to secure, as far as possible, the permanence of any re-arrangement, by leaving room for the probable incorporations of future years. The accommodation provided for smaller objects is little more than they already require for advantageous display.
First Assyrian Room.
XIII. First Assyrian or Nimroud Room.—This room, on the site of the basement room, would be formed by demolishing the small room, with the adjoining students’ room and staircase; by extending over their site the glass roof of room; by throwing a floor, on a continuous level with those of the adjoining galleries, and supported upon iron pillars, over so much of room as is coloured brown in the plan; and by carrying up thin partitions from this floor to the glass roof, so as to inclose a new apartment. This apartment would, at the south end, extend across the whole breadth of room, but elsewhere it would be limited to a central space, nineteen feet wide, corresponding to the present central compartment of room, so as to leave open an area of ten feet wide on each side. The open areas would serve to light both the whole room below, of which the central portion would be partially obscured by the new structure, and also the rooms in the adjoining basements, which, though no longer used for exhibition, might be serviceable for other subordinate purposes. In one of the open areas might be a private staircase to the basement. Room XIII would be considerably loftier than the present ‘Nimroud Side Gallery,’ and it would contain two thousand nine hundred and seventy superficial feet, and three hundred and fourteen linear feet of wall-space, instead of two thousand one hundred and seventy-six superficial feet, and two hundred and seventy-eight feet of wall-space. In this new room would be placed the earliest of the Assyrian monuments, those of Sardanapalus I; at the south end those found in the two small temples at Nimroud, including the colossal lion, the arched monolith and altar, and the mythological figures from a doorway; in the northern portion, the sculptures from the North-west Palace at Nimroud, including the small winged lion and bull, now in room.
Second Assyrian Room.