EGYPT NEWBERRY 455 



from the Lebanon region, and it must be remembered that the 

 Egyptian name for a seagoing ship, was khnyt, from Kehen, 

 " Byblos," the port of the Lebanon, Avhere these ships must have been 

 built and from whence they sailed. The sacred barks of the princi- 

 pal gods of Egypt in historic times were invariably built of conif- 

 erous wood from the Lebanon. Transport ships on the Nile were 

 sometimes built of the native sunt wood, and Herodotus describes 

 them as made of planks about 2 cubits long which were put together 

 "brick fashion." No masts or sail-yards, however, could possibly 

 be cut from any native Egyptian tree. In the Sudan at the present 

 day masts are sometimes made by splicing together a number of 

 small pieces of siint and binding them with oxhide, but such masts 

 are extremely liable to start in any gale, and they would be useless 

 for seagoing ships. It may be doubted whether the art of building 

 seagoing ships originated in Egypt. It may be doubted also whether 

 the custom of burying the dead in wooden coffins originated in Egypt. 

 In countries where a tree is a rarity a plank for a coffin is generally 

 unknown. In the Admonitions of an Egyptian Sage, written some 

 time before 2000 B. C, at a period when there was internal strife in 

 Egypt, the sage laments that "Men do not sail northward to 

 [BybJ-los^* to-day. What shall we do for coniferous trees ^^ for our 

 mummies, with the produce of which priests are buried, and with the 

 oil of which [chiefs] are embalmed as far as Keftiu? They come 

 no more." This ancient sage raises another anthropological question 

 when he refers to the oil used for embalming. The only oils pro- 

 duced by native trees or shrubs in Egypt were olive oil, ben oil from 

 the moringa, and castor oil from the castor-oil plant. The resins 

 and oils used for embalming were principally those derived from 

 pines and other coniferous trees. Egypt produced no Idnds of in- 

 cense trees or shrubs. The common incenses were pine resin, lada- 

 num, and myrrh, and all these were imported. It is difficult to be- 

 lieve that the ceremonial use of incense arose in Egypt. 



These are a few of the questions raised by a study of the material 

 relating to the origins of the ancient civilization of Egypt. There 

 are numbers of others that are waiting to be dealt with. Egypt is 

 extraordinarily rich in material for the anthropologist. It is a 

 storehouse full of the remains of man's industry from pre-agricul- 

 tural times right down to the present day. Almost every foot of 

 ground hides some relic of bygone man. The climatic conditions 

 prevailing there are exceptional, and it is largely owing to the 

 absence of rain that so full a record of man and his works has been 



-*This place ends -ny ; the restoration [Kp-'\ny is due to Sethe and "suits the 

 traces, the space, and context quite admirably."— A. H. Gardiner, The Admonitions of an 

 Egyptian Sage, Leipzig, 1909, p. 33. 



■^ The word is as, as generic one for pines, fir, etc. 



