
FLINT IMPLEMENTS FROM ANCIENT EGYPT. hata! 
as palxolithic. Hardly to be distinguished from this scraper by patina 
and general appearance are the two implements—one also evidently a 
scraper—Fig. 45, page 95, and Fig. 46, page 96—which were found 
by Mr. Seton-Karr on the surface of the high plateau of Thebes 
on the western bank of the Nile. Both present the rich soft, glossy 
surface, and the deep reddish-brown patination (here with difficulty soluble 
in strong hydrochloric acid), as well as the form and wear which ought 
to characterise a true paleolithic flint. ‘he flint of which they are made 
is the same as that of the Wady el Sheikh implements. Gathered on the 
same western plateau are in the Museum large numbers of rough-butted, 
sharply pear-shaped, flints, with the same deep patination and glossy surface 
as Fig. 46, and the same “paleolithic” facies. They are absolutely 
indistinguishable from a dozen others from the Wady el Sheikh mines 
near Mr. Seton-Karr’s Camps XIV. and X., 1897. Others, identical 
almost in shape and characters, have been found by Professor F. Petrie and 
by Mr. Quibell on the surface of the high plateau at (among other places) 
Ksna and Ballas. These are referred to by Mr. Griffith in the Archwulogical 
Lteport of the Egypt Exploration Fund, for 1896-7, page 48, in the following 
extract :—“ Egypt,” he says, “as we know it, came into existence in 
the pleistocene epoch, and then began the alluvial deposit to which 
the richness of the soil is due. But before the formation of the Nile 
Valley palzolithic man was on the ground, and he has left us, both 
on the surface of the desert and among the gravels, records of his presence 
in well-formed axes of flint of the same type that are met with in 
England, and as far north as Yorkshire, in France, in Germany, and even in 
India and South Africa.” Professor Petrie and Mr. Quibell observe also, in 
their Naguda and Ballas, p. 49 :—“ The valley of the Nile is cut down a 
depth of 1400 feet through a limestone plateau, the edges of which are deeply 
channelled with drainage valleys. . . . On the top of the 1400 feet 
plateau are great numbers of worked flints of paleolithic type. = 
That the high plateau was the home of man in palolithic times is shown 
by the worked flints lying scattered around the centres where they were 
actually worked. The Nile, being far higher then, left no mud flats as at 
present for habitation ; and the rainfall—as shown by the valley erosion 
and waterfalls—must have caused an abundant vegetation on the plateau 
where man would live and hunt his game.” ‘The authors figure (pl. Ixviii., 
lxix., and Ixxvi.), a series of these flints, and many of them are hardly to be 
distinguished from those collected by Mr. Seton-Karr on the Theban plateau 
and in the Wady el Sheikh mines. They are rough-butted, pointed, spear- 
shaped (?) hammers, nondescript flints, or scrapers, roughly flaked round the 
margins, many of them also almost indistinguishable from the “ovoid flints, the 
domestic implements” of the pre-dynastic Libyan “New Race” (cf. op. cit. 
pls. Lxxi. e¢ seqgg.). In addition, a further series of flints is figured on Plate 
Ixxy. of the same volume, obtained by Mr. Quibell in the Ballas desert at 
the 900 feet level above the Nile plain. . There are few, if any, characters by 
which they can be picked out from among those from Nagada. Along with 
these Ballas desert flints, “there were,” Mr. Quibell adds, ‘some rounded 
flints, all stained dark brown ; it is from such that these worked flints have 
been formed, and the chips of working were scattered around.” 
Now, Mr. Quibell and Professor Petrie’s explorations seem to prove 
that the rough and rudely-chipped “ovoid flints,” ‘the common domestic 
implements of the New Race” (which, as pointed out above, are hardly 
distinguishable from the “paleolithic types” of the Ballas desert), are 
coeval with “the finest examples of such work . . . known from any 
country or age.” The super-excellence of these people, therefore, in the 
manufacture of flint and of vases of stone and pottery, was not incompatible 
