100 BULLETIN OF THE LIVERPOOL MUSEUMS, 
in appearance than another scraper (Fig. 45, natural size), or the doubt- 
ful scraper (Fig. 46, natural size), both of which, of unmistakable 
“paleolithic type,” were picked up from the surface of the western desert 
near Thebes. They present, perhaps, a more velvety surface on both faces, 
but their reddish brown “ eonic tinting” is no deeper than, if it be even as 
deep as, that of Fig. 47. 
(h) Cores and Flakes.—Flint cores (of which Fig. 42—a trihedral 
wedge or “shoe-shaped ” blocklet of flint 5,°, inches long by 13 wide—is an 
illustration) are very numerous in the collection. From them oe evidently 
struck the many thousands of long fine flakes which were lying all around at 
the ateliers in the Wady el Sheikh and Wady Sojoor. Only a very few, 
however, of the flakes appear ever to have been worked or used for any 
purpose, as their margins are quite perfect and unbroken. One or two are 
roughly pointed, per haps to be used as punches; and if so, probably in making 
the initial perforation in the flat disks intended for branclets:: nee bes 
were extensively used, it is believed, by the stone masons in dynastic times 
to smooth as well as to inscribe the faces of limestone blocks, and also in the 
operations connected with the preparation of the corpse for mummiftication. 
Why so many thousands of them—all perfect as flakes—should have 
been struck off and never carried away is difficult to comprehend. One can 
easily perceive that they were not refuse-chips discarded in the formation 
of some other implement out of those shoe-like flints (Fig. 42), for these 
were evidently never intended for anything but cores. Many of them, indeed, 
have been worked down almost to the stump and so left. M. de Morgan* 
who states that these nuclei are very abundant in Egypt in every district 
from Cairo to Thebes, figures, from the kitchen-middens at Toukh, somewhat 
similar examples to that shown on page 94. 


(‘) Nondescript Worked Stones.—In the collection there are many 
rough-hewn heavy bars of flint of which Fig. 41 is a good example. This 
block (17 inches in length by 33 deep), is three-sided, and more pointed at 
one end than the other; the ridge of its rough triangle is zig-zagged by 
having large flakes struck off alternately and equidistantly from each side 
of the middle line. Unless a very long knife, or a long hoe or digger to be 
used attached to an angled haft, were to be manufactured from this stone, it 
is difficult to conjecture for what use it was intended. Some of these blocks, 
I may remark in passing, are deeply pitted by sun-flaking. Figs. 43 and 44 
are other roughly blocked out implements of unknown use. Fig. 43 is more 
or less five-sided, 7? inches long, 14 wide, and 22 deep. Fig. 44, a trihedral 
bar, is 9} inches in length by 2 24 across the base. I find it quite impossible 
to suggest a probable use for the tools of which these heavy stones are the 
rough-hewn outlines. 
From Cairo southward as far as Esna—about 500 miles—the Nile, as 
every tourist knows, runs in a deep but comparatively narrow valley. 
The banks are high and precipitous—much higher on the eastern side than on 
the western—the walls being of lmestone of which the lower strata are of 
Upper Cretaceous age, and the higher of the well-known nummulitic beds of 
the Eocene, full of flints. The yellowish white or yellowish brown walls of 
these escarpments—descending in many places in three great steps to the river 
plain—have their beds so symmetrically laid one above another as to seem, as 
Maspero has well remarked, “more like the walls of a town than the side of 
a mountain.” The “tread” of these steps forms more or less level plateaux ; 
the tableland of the highest terrace extending on the east ot the N ile into the 


*Op. cit. pp. 90, 91. 

