OU) WORLD PREHISTORY — MacC'URDY 497 



These have been traced over some hundertls of miles on both sides 

 of the Nile and in ailjoining deserts between Assuan and Assiut. 



In Lower Ejrypt, between the Faiyum and Cairo, the series is not 

 so complete. Tlius far no representative of the 30-meter terrace has 

 been discovered, but an old Nile channel at an elevation of 2(>-21 

 meters has yielded waterwurn (tierived) ("helleun and fresh Acheu- 

 lian implements. The Mousterian terrace in Lower Kj^ypt has been 

 traced through the Hawara Channel and into the Faiyum. The 

 evidence shows that in Mousterian times the Faiyum w^as occupied by 

 a vast lake fed by the 2sile. 



The Faiyum Basin is an integral part o'f the Nile system; not 

 a tributary system as once supposed, but an overflow reservoir into 

 whicii the Nile discharged its surplus water. In Paleolithic times 

 this Faiyum lake was full. The surface of the lake then stood at 

 34.*J m. (liii feet) above sea level. There was an annual flood and 

 annual low Nile in Paleolithic times as there is to-day. Now the 

 annual Nile flood reaches Cairo in late summer. Thus it may have 

 been the early autunmal gales that swept from the west across the 

 Faiyum Lake, then at high level, which produced the storm beach 

 some 10 feet (3.05 m.) high along the eastern shore of the lake. 

 Strong westerly autunmal gales still sweep across the Faiyum 

 Basin: but on the shores of the shrunken survivor of the old lake 

 now hidden far below sea level, they produce a storm beach barely 

 a foot high (30 cm.). 



Along the eastern shore of the old Faiyum Lake a short distance 

 south of the Philadelphia ruins, there are important imi)lement- 

 bearing deposits. The site is at Gebel cr-llus, the implements are 

 of Mousterian age and the elevation is 34 m. (115.5 feet) above sea 

 level. The richest site thus far discovered in the Faiyum is on the 

 beach at Kasr Basil near Tutun on the southern shore of the old 

 lake and at an elevation of 34.2 m. (112 feet). There is a basal 

 pebble bed with Mousterian implements on which is superposed a 

 silt deposit in turn covered by gravel, both containing Mousterian 

 implements. The cores or nuclei as well as the finished tools re- 

 semble those found in Mousterian stations of western Europe. The 

 cores vary from elongated to siiuarish (" double-ended ") and 

 discoid forms. The material employed was of flint or chert. 



In the kitchen middens and the silts associated with them in the 

 Kom Ombo plain, between Edfu and Assuan, E. Vignard has found 

 an industry which seems to have evolved locally from the Mousterian, 

 but wliich in time ceased to be recognizable as Mousterian, owing to 

 an accumulation of modifica-tions and the growth of new types. To 

 the modified indigenous industry Vignard has given the name Sebi- 

 lian. He divides it into three phases: Sebilian I, 11, and IIL The 

 Mousterian disk persists in Sebilian T. The ndcrolithic flakes and 



