
FLINT IMPLEMENTS FROM ANCIENT EGYPT. 107 
Now, as already mentioned, a large proportion of the flint implements 
found at the mines are discarded specimens broken in half in the chipping. 
In many cases the two portions, in falling to the ground from the maker's 
hands, dropped the one part with the up-turned surface the reverse of that of 
its fellow, with the result that when the pieces are re-united the surfaces of 
the completed implement have each a moiety dark, the effect of sunlight and 
weathering, and a moiety, in striking contrast, of nearly the original yellowish 
white, or yellowish grey colour of the chert. The exposure in many 
instances has been sufficiently prolonged for the skyward side of the stone 
to attain a deep dark brown, almost black, colour. The history of not a few 
of these flints, as read from its imprint on the opposite faces of the two halves 
(unfortunately scarcely perceptible in the figures), is most interesting. An 
implement may have the surface of one of its halves almost black from 
incessant protracted exposure, while its lower aspect is almost white from 
lying protected in the sand undisturbed ; the other half, after reposing 
with one face upon the desert surface for about half the time that its fellow 
had, seems to have been by some accident turned down-face up to lie baking 
in sun, wind, and rain for an equally long period, for both of its faces are about 
equally tanned, to about one-half the tint of the black surface of the 
other portion of the implement. Another implement, after the unlucky blow 
that broke it in two, was fated to lie with the surface of one of its halves 
exposed till it acquired a brown-black patina, when it was by some agency 
reversed and lay with its lower aspect skyward sufficiently long to attain a 
deep reddish brown tint, which is but a discolouration in comparison with the 
hue of its darker face. The upward face of the other half of the same tool 
seems to have reposed amid the unbroken stillness of the desert, with a narrow 
flake athwart it till the weather had stencilled its form across the bronzing 
surface of the flint. After that uncomputable period, the flake was dis- 
placed, mayhap by the foot of a human wanderer or the fleeting hoofs of an 
ibex or a gazelle, without disturbing the upturned ‘surface of the fragment, 
whose continued exposure to the elements more deeply bronzed the flint 
without entirely obliterating the stencilled streak across it. Then what had 
during these quiet years been the nether side was by some accident at last 
upturned to the sun, beneath which it was baked to a deep bronze, then 
finally buried in the protecting sand till the day it was carried away from the 
desert ; for neither of its surfaces has acquired anything like the depth of 
patination of the darkest face of the other half. Now, some gauge of the rate 
of this “‘zeonic tinting” is given us by so great an authority as Professor Petrie: 
— The old desert surfaces are stained dark brown by exposure during long 
ages, and this colour, varying from orange to black, is characteristic of 
all the flints of early age from this plateau. It is certain that only a faint 
tinge of brown is produced on flints that are at least 7000 years old under the 
like conditions ; and this may give a slight scale of the ages that have past 
since flint was worked here by paleolithic man.” Tested by this standard, 
the bulk of the Seton-Karr collection must be many times 7000 years old. 
The great majority of the specimens—even the deepest stained from the 
western desert—have their edges and the outlines of the flakings as sharp 
and unworn as the day they were made. A few, however, are deeply eroded 
by drifting sand, while others present, in addition to their discolouration, the 
soft glossy surface and rounded angles and edges—marks, in the opinion of 
archeological authorities, indicative of high antiquity—which characterise 
the water-worn flints from the drift-beds of Europe of palzeolithic age. These 
implements are of the same material as the others from the Wady el Sheikh 
or Wady Sojoor mines, with nothing about them to point to their being of a 
different age or make from their associates in the same workshop. 
The implements figured in the foregoing pages were all found on the 
