For the two idols of that
country, which stand in the ground floor of the Musaeum of the
Capitol, and indeed all the Aegyptian statues in the Camera
Aegyptiaca of this very building, are such monstrous
misrepresentations of nature, that they never could have obtained
a place among the statues of Rome, except as curiosities of
foreign superstition, or on account of the materials, as they are
generally of basaltes, porphyry, or oriental granite.
At the farther end of the court of this Musaeum, fronting the
entrance, is a handsome fountain, with the statue of a river-god
reclining on his urn; this is no other than the famous Marforio,
so called from its having been found in Martis Fore. It is
remarkable only as being the conveyance of the answers to the
satires which are found pasted upon Pasquin, another mutilated
statue, standing at the corner of a street.
The marble coffin, supposed to have contained the ashes of
Alexander Severus, which we find in one of these apartments, is a
curious antique, valuable for its sculpture in basso relievo,
especially for the figures on the cover, representilig that
emperor and his mother Julia Mammea.
I was sorry I had not time to consider the antient plan of Rome,
disposed in six classes, on the stair-case of this Musaeum, which
was brought hither from a temple that stood in the Forum Boarium,
now called Campo vaccine.
