EGYPT NEWBERRY 443 



Upper Egypt in the region between Edfu and Thinis, especially at 

 Hierakonpolis and Naqada, and north of Naqada, in the neighbor- 

 hood of Abydos. Opposite Edfu is a desert route leading to the Ked 

 Sea ; at Kuf t, opposite Naqada, is the beginning of the road leading 

 to Koser, the port on the Red Sea. It has been thought that the 

 people who brought culture to Egypt reached the Nile Valley by one 

 or by both these routes from a "God's Land" situated somewhere 

 down the Red Sea coast. But throughout the whole history of 

 Egypt culture has always come from the north and spread south- 

 ward. 



From a study of the monuments of the First Dynasty that had 

 been found at Abydos and elsewhere in Upper Egypt I ventured, 

 nearly twenty years ago,^^ to suggest the existence in predynastic 

 times of a Delta civilization which, in culture, was far advanced be- 

 yond that of Upper Egypt, and I pointed out that it was probably 

 to a Delta civilization that the dynastic Egyptians owed their system 

 of writing. I was led to this conclusion by the following facts. 

 Although many predynastic cemeteries had been thoroughly explored 

 in Upper Egypt, no grave had yielded a single fragment of hiero- 

 glyphic writing. The only inference that can be drawn from this is 

 that hieroglyphic writing was unlmown, or at all events unpracticed, 

 by the inhabitants of Upper Egypt before dynastic times. On the 

 other hand, the discoveries at Naqada, Hierakonpolis, and Abydor 

 had shown us that all the essential features of the Egyptian systen 

 of writing were fully developed at the beginning of the First 

 Dynasty. Hieroglyphic signs were already in full use as simple 

 phonograms, and their employment as phonetic complements was 

 well established. Determinative signs are found beginning to ap 

 pear in these early writings', but, as Erman and Griffith have noticed, 

 even as late as the Fifth Dynasty, their use was very restricted in 

 the monumental inscriptions, although they were common in the 

 cursive and freely written texts of the Pyramids. At the very 

 beginning of the First Dynasty the numerical system was complete 

 up to millions, and the Egyptians had already worked out a solar 

 year of 365 days. This was indeed a remarkable achievement. 



These facts are of great significance, for it is clear that the hiero- 

 glyphic system of writing, as we find it at the beginning of the First 

 Dynasty, must have been the growth of many antecedent ages, and 

 yet no trace of the early stages of its evolution has been found on 

 Upper Egyptian soil. There is no clear evidence, lit \' ever, that the 

 system was borrowed from any country outside Egypt ; the fauna and 

 flora of its characters give it every appearance of being indigenous. 

 It is apparent, therefore, that we must seek the cradle of the Egyp- 



^ Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, February, 1906, p. 69. 



