110 -BULLETIN OF THE LIVERPOOL MUSEUMS. 
The next examples of manufactured flint—-many of them very similar to 
these ovoid types and to gun flints, or modern “ strike-a-lights”—to which 
a date can be assigned, have been found at Medum, whose tombs and 
pyramids belong to the [Vth dynasty, about 3900 B.c. Here, where 
are found the earliest forms of hieroglyphics,* is pictured the cutting up 
of fish with flint knives of forms, according to Professor Petrie, similar to 
that of Fig. 30—which is a spoiled rough-hewn specimen. In association 
with the flint, it may be mentioned in passing, bronze objects have been 
found at Medum made of copper containing 9-1 per cent. of tin. 
If, therefore, the tools found at Kahun are really contemporary with 
Kahun, we have a date—the XIIth dynasty, about 4500 years ago—at 
which the Wady el Sheikh and Wady Sojoor mines were being worked, and 
consequently a scale by which we may gauge the depth of patination that 
can be acquired by exposure under certain conditions during that 
period. If our implement, Fig. 30, a form typical, according to Petrie, 
of the IVth dynasty, belongs to that date, then perhaps the quarries 
were being worked from 3900 B.c. onwards, though in my own opinion the 
patination and general facies of the implements rather bespeak their being 
all about equal age, and that only the shape may have persisted. 
The depth of tint of discolouration and the character of the stain would seem 
to vary very much, however, with the quality or constitution of the flint, 
and the nature of the surface on which it lay exposed. Some of the knives, 
the armlet fragments, and many of the flakes are apparently quite un- 
changed, or darkened slightly, there being at least no patination removable 
by concentrated hydrochloric acid, which, generally, quite removes the 
(in most cases apparently) ferric oxide stain. On the other hand, the patina 
—rich warm brown in colour—on some of the implements from the 
Theban plateau on the western desert, stubbornly resists the action of this 
acid. Of the knives and (?) hoes most similar to those from Kahun (and 
therefore more certainly of XIIth dynasty age), all equally exposed, some 
are deeply patinated, and others hardly at all. The patina on the knife 
Fig. 28, page 90, resembles a thin blackish brown wash, which turns inky- 
black on the application of nitric and hydrochloric acids. In specimens in the 
Museum from graves of the predynastic Race —6700 years old—the discoloura- 
tion is imperceptible, and no effect is produced by strong hydrochloric acid. 
They have, however, been in graves, and are, moreover, of a very different 
sort of flint, quite unlike any that is found apparently in the mines in the 
two wadys from which comes the collection I have been describing in this 
paper. The patination of the latter flints, in many specimens of which there 
is much magnesium and calcium carbonate, varies from the natural greyish 
white through reddish yellow to black according to the length of exposure. + 
The patina would, therefore, appear to be a very uncertain criterion of 
the age of a flint implement. The scraper, Fig. 47, page 96, from the Wady 
Sojoor, made of the same flint as the majority of the axe-like (%) hoes, has its 
less exposed surface only slightly discoloured, while its upper surface is not 
only stained almost black, while retaining the sharpness of its flake edges, 
but it has acquired the glossy polish which, according to Sir John Evans, is 
so characteristic of implements of paleolithic age. Yet it is undoubtedly 
part and parcel of the other implements which I have assigned to the 
XIIth dynasty. But for its associates it would undoubtedly be classed 

* The earliest Egyptian script occurs in the period of the first three dynasties, and 
this, and not that of the IV. dynasty, ought surely to constitute the beginning at 
least, though not so recognised, of the historic period in Egypt. 
+ The palzolithic flakes found by Mr. Spurrell in the mid-pleistocene river deposit 
at Crayford, Kent, are, as. Prof. Boyd-Dawkins informs me, unaltered, while those found 
by himself at Wookey Hole in a Hyzna Den were altered to the centre. 
