| Jean-François Champollion, who translated the hieroglyphics of the Rosetta Stone, was the first curator of the collection of Egyptian Antiquities – now the biggest and most important in the world after the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. Starting on the ground floor of the Sully wing, the thematic circuit leads up from the atmospheric crypt of the Sphinx (room 1) to the Nile, source of all life in Egypt, and takes the visitor through the everyday life of pharaonic Egypt by way of cooking utensils, jewellery, the principles of hieroglyphics, musical instruments, sarcophagi, a host of mummified cats and dozens of examples of the delicate naturalism of Egyptian decorative technique, such as the wall tiles depicting a piebald calf galloping through fields of papyrus, and a duck taking off from a marsh. Upstairs, on the first floor, the chronological circuit keeps the masterpieces on the right-hand side, while numerous pots and statuettes of more specialist interest are displayed to the left. Among the major exhibits are the Great Sphinx, carved from a single block of pink granite, the polychrome SeatedScribe statue, the striking, life-size, wooden statue of Chancellor Nakhti, a bust of Amenophis IV and a low-relief sculpture of Sethi I and the goddess Hathor. Post-pharaonic Egypt is exhibited on the lower ground floor level of the Denon wing. The legacy of the pharaohs is easily discernible in the funerary trappings of Roman Egypt, though a new and startling naturalism stares out of the faces of the mummy portraits.
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