Page 107
Egyptian Museum. BERLIN. Section, 3. 79
appear the law-givers Moses, Solon, Charlemagne, and Frederick the
Great; above them, Egypt, Greece, Italy, Germany. On the window-
walls are allegorical figures of Sculpture, Painting, Architecture, and
Engraving. Around the entire hall, beneath the richly-decorated
open ceiling, runs a Frieze, bearing a humorous representation
(in grisaille) of the history of the development of mankind, termin¬
ating with Humboldt leaning on his Cosmos, the whole hardly
intelligible without a detailed explanation.
First Floor.
The first floor of the New Museum and the passage leading to the
Old Museum are occupied by the very extensive and valuable Col¬
lection of Casts from the antique. Scientific catalogue by Friede-
richs (2nd edit, by Wolters, 1885; 12 Jl). Room III contains also
Greek landscapes, and Room X mural paintings from the Greek
heroic myths. — Rooms XI and XII contain the casts of the sculp¬
tures discovered during the excavations carried on by Ernst Curtius
(d. 1896) in 1876-81 at Olympia at the expense of the German
Empire, and the duplicates of original sculptures found on the same
occasion.
The originals of the first-named sculptures remain at Olympia. The
chief objects here are the two Pediment Groups from the Temple of
Zeus, by an unknown sculptor of the beginning of the 5th cent. B.C.
The E. Pediment represents the preparations for the chariot race between
Polops and Oenomaos, which Curtius describes as follows. In the centre
stands Zeus, with Pelops and Hippodamia on his right, and King Oeno¬
maos and his wife Sterope on his left; to the right and left of these
appear the two four-horse chariots, held by kneeling charioteers, beyond
which, on the left, are a seated man, a kneeling girl, and finally the
recumbent figure of the river-god Alpheus, and, on the right, a bald-
headed old man, a boy seated on the ground, and the river-god Cla-
deus. On the W. Pediment the struggle between the Lapithse and the
Centaurs at the marriage of Pirithous is depicted. In the middle is
Apollo extending his right hand in a commanding gesture, while on each
side are groups of combatants; to the left a Centaur abducting a woman
and attacked by Pirithous; to the right, Theseus protecting a woman
against her abductors; to the left again, a Centaur carrying off a boy,
and to the right, a kneeling Lapith strangling a Centaur; the succeeding
groups on each side resemble the first groups, but with the figures in a
kneeling position; the composition finally terminates with a recumbout
female form at each end.
The chief single figures are those of the Hermes of Praxiteles, the
only authenticated and at the same time well preserved masterpiece of
the greatest Greek sculptor of the 4th cent., and of the Nike of Paeonins,
erected at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War, in which the sculptor
has most admirably succeeded in representing the goddess of Victory in
the act of flying.
From the staircase (see above) we descend to the —
Ground Floor.
Direct entrance see p. 78.
The groundfloor is occupied by the *Bgyptian Museum, one
of the most important collections of the kind, founded by Passal-