128 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS. 



mixed with those of other cultivated plants, one appeared 

 to him to belong to L. angrustifolium, and the other to 

 L. humile ; but it must be owned that a single seed 

 without plant or capsule is not sufficient proof. Ancient 

 Egyptian paintings show that flax was not reaped with 

 a sickle like cereals, but uprooted. 1 In Egypt flax is 

 cultivated in the winter, for the summer drought would 

 no more allow of a perennial variety, than the cold of 

 northern countries, where it is sown in spring, to be 

 gathered in in summer. It may be added that the 

 annual flax of the variety called humile is the only one 

 now grown in Abyssinia, and also the only one that 

 modern collectors have seen in Egypt. 2 



Heer suggests that the ancient Egyptians may have 

 cultivated L. angustifolium of the Mediterranean region, 

 sowing it as an annual plant. 3 I am more inclined 

 to believe that they had previously imported or re- 

 ceived their flax from Egypt, already in the form of the 

 species L. humile. Their modes of cultivation, and the 

 figures on the monuments, show that their knowledge 

 of the plant dated from a remote antiquity. Now it is 

 known that the Egyptians of the first dynasties before 

 Cheops belonged to a proto-semitic race, which came 

 into Egypt by the isthmus of Suez. 4 Flax has been 

 found in a tomb of ancient Chaldea prior to the existence 

 of Babylon, 5 and its use in this region is lost in the 

 remotest antiquity. Thus the first Egyptians of white 

 race may have imported the cultivated flax, or their im- 

 mediate successors may have received it from Asia before 

 the epoch of the Phoenician colonies in Greece, and before 

 direct communication was established between Greece 

 and Egypt under the fourteenth dynasty. 6 



1 Rosellini, pis. 35 and 36, quoted by Unger, Bot. Streifzuge, No. 4, 

 p. 62. 



2 W. Schimper, Ascherson, Boissier, Schweinf nrth, quoted by Braun. 

 Heer, Ueb. d. Flachs, p. 26. 



4 Maspero, Histoire Ancienne des Peuples de I' Orient., edit. 3, Paris, 

 1978, p. 13. 



5 Journal of the Royal Asiat. oc., vol. xv. p. 271, quoted by Heer, Ueb. 

 den Fl. 



Maspero, p. 213. 



