THE STONE AGE IN EGYPT. 203 



man, known to us only through the rough-cut flints we find in the 

 alluvions, made his first appearance. After this period of excavation 

 came that of filling up with silt, which still continues. New evi- 

 dences of man appear in his burial places and the ruins of his vil- 

 lages, the kitchen middens which he has left in his habitations of 

 unburned brick and in his camps. This time he is more civilized ; he 

 chips his flints with a skill that is not surpassed in European neolithic 

 implements; he makes vessels of stone and clay, covers them with 

 rude paintings, sculptures animal forms of schist, and wears neck- 

 laces of the shells and the stones of the country. Then comes a 

 foreign people to take possession of Egypt, bringing knowledge of 

 metals, writing, hieroglyphics, painting, sculpture, new industries 

 and arts that have nothing in common with the arts of the people 

 it has overcome. The ancient Pharaonic empire begins, or perhaps 

 the reign of the divine dynasties. The men with stone implements 

 are the aborigines; the others are the conquering civilized Egyptians. 

 Nothing can be more interesting than a comparison of the arts of the 

 aborigines and those of the Egyptians of the earlier dynasties. 

 Nearly all their characteristics are different, and it is impossible to 

 regard them as of common origin. Yet some of the native forms per- 

 sisted till the last days of the empire of the Pharaohs. These 

 aborigines belonged to a race that is now extinct, they having been 

 absorbed into the mass of the Egyptians and Nubians among whom 

 they lived, and from this mixture the fellah of ancient times is de- 

 rived. The origin of the conquering race — of the Egyptians as we 

 know them — has not been precisely determined. The weight of evi- 

 dence, so far as it has been obtained, and the balance of opinion, are 

 in favor of an Asiatic origin and of primary relationship with the 

 Shemites of Chaldea. 



In Egypt more than in any other country it is necessary to pro- 

 ceed with the most scrupulous circumspection in the examination of 

 remote antiquities. The relics of thousands of years of human life 

 have been piled one upon another and often intermixed. The ques- 

 tions they raise can not be answered in the cabinet or by the study of 

 texts; but the inquiry must be prosecuted on the ground, by com- 

 parison of the deposits where they are found and in the deposits from 

 which they are recovered. 



From my first arrival in Egypt, in 1892, my attention has been 

 greatly occupied with the question of the origin of the relics of the 

 stone age that have been found from time to time in that country. 

 I have gathered up the scattered documents, explored a large number 

 of sites, and have bought such flint implements as I have found on 

 sale. I have gradually been led to believe that while some of these 

 cut stones may possibly belong to the historical epoch, we shall have 



