102 BULLETIN OF THE LIVERPOOL MUSEUMS. 
from the numerous workings how extensively the ancient Egyptians quarried 
for flint in this one Wady; the majority of the excavations are situated 
on its right bank, and generally on the lowest and middle plateaux, which 
here rise in three tiers from the dry, sandy bed of the stream. Each 
excavation or mine was also the site of the workshop of the skilled artificer 
in flint or limestone, as it naturally would be, so that he might be near the 
newly-extracted material, and be saved the trouble and cost of carrying it 
elsewhere till the work was at least rough hewn.* A view of these plateaux 
is given on page 81. The workings were situated either along ledges in the 
face of the cliffs as seen in the view on the preceding page, or were shafts sunk 
in the level ground on the terrace-“ treads,” of which two excellent views are 

Virw OF SHAFTS ON THE LEVEL TERRACE-TABLELAND, NEAR Camp XI., 1896. 
(From a Photograph by Mr. Seton-Karr.) 
given, from photographs taken by Mr. Seton-Karr, reproduced on this and on 
the following page (pp. 102, 103). 
On these plateaux as on one near Camp XI., 1896, shafts about two feet 

*«* We have already seen that the gun-flint knappers of the present day are said to 
work most successfully on blocks of flint recently extracted, and those, too, from a 
particular layer in the chalk, and it seems probable that the ancient flint-workers were 
also acquainted with the advantages of using the flints fresh from the quarry, and 
worked them into shape at the pits from which they were dug, not only on account of 
the saving in transport of the partly-manufactured articles, but on account of the 
greater facility of working the freshly-extracted flints. This working the flints upon 
the spot is conclusively shown by the examination of the old flint quarry at Cissbury, 
Sussex, by General Pitt-Rivers, then Colonel A. Lane-Fox, and others.”—(Sir John 
Evans in Ancient Stone Implements, p. 32.) 
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