108 BULLETIN OF THE LIVERPOOL MUSEUMS. 
surface of the desert lying, with the exception of Figs. 45 and 46, 
around the mines or workings whence was dug the flint out of which they 
have been fashioned. The rudeness of many of them is due not to primitive 
workmanship, but to their being half-made tools, discarded on their fracture. 
For closely associated with the most unfinished of them were found 
examples of such knowledge and precision in the art of flint-flaking as the 
knives delineated in Figs. 24, 26, and 28; and the perfect adaptation of eye 
and hand as the broken fragments of the bangle on page 82, Figs. 1 to 8 
prove. 
Dr. Petrie has figured a number of the flint tools found by him in 
Kahun, the town wherein dwelt the workmen who built at Ilahun the 
pyramids and temples of Usertesen II., the fourth King of the XIIth 
dynasty, who reigned from 2684 to 2660 B.c. Now, as I have already 
pointed out, in describing in detail on a former page the implements brought 
by Mr. Seton-Karr, a great number of them are so close in material, form, and 
character to those figured from Kahun that there can be little doubt that 
both sets were made about the same centuries—indeed, some of the Kahun 
tools might have been taken from the workshops of the Wady el Sheikh, for 
many of them are hardly more finished than some of those left at the 
mines. 
Moreover, in the inscriptions reproduced in Beni Hasan, vol. ii, pls. vii, 
viii., by Mr. Griffith of the Egypt Exploration Fund, we see in the hands 
of the butchers and skinning-men flint knives closely resembling those from 


MANUFACTURE OF FuiInt Knives, rrom_THE NortH WALL or THE MAIN CHAMBER 
In Toms 15, Brent Hasan. 
“‘The illustration shows the complete scene with the inscription sekht sefu, lit. 
‘striking knives,’ or ‘flints.’ . . . It seems to have been the custom for the 
knife me akers to work sitting on the ground, and frequently in groups of two. Besides 
the knives, they have only two instruments of their trade, an anvil and a fabricator” 
(Gritith, Beni Hasan, vol. iii., p- 34). 
(By the courtesy of the Egypt Exploration Fund.) 
the Wady el Sheikh (Fig. 28) and Wady Sojoor (Fig. 25), proving that knives 
were being made of this material for common use in the XIth dynasty— 
a date far down in the historic period. By the kindness of the Committee of 
the Fund, I am able to reproduce on this and the following page a couple of 
scenes from two tombs at Beni Hasan, showing the flint workers busy in the 
making of flint knives, chipping them sometimes held in the hand, some- 
times resting on an anvil. 
M. de Mor gan has thrown some doubt on the contemporaneity of the 
stone implements and the building of the Illahun pyramid, suggesting that 
