598 



NA TURE 



[April 19. 1900 



almost identical in form and size are figured by Prof. Petrielrom 

 Kahun, a Xllth Dynasty town, while others of the knives are 

 of the same form as those seen in the process of manufacture in 

 the wall-paintings of Beni Hasan. Many of the knives also bear a 

 remarkable resemblance to the finest of those from Scandinavia. 

 Several of the scrapers are almost black in colour, and, having a 

 soft velvety surface, would pass for true palKoliths anywhere. 

 Cores and flakes occurred in thousands along the Wady banks. 

 Why so many thousands — all perfect as flakes — should have been 

 struck off and never carried away is difficult to comprehend. 

 Lastly, the collection contains a large number of long bars 

 of stone partially worked, the use of which it is impossible to 

 conjecture. 



A map and several views are given showing Mr. Seton-Karr's 

 collecting grounds along the Wady (Fig. i) ; and these prove 

 that the implements were scattered round the mines, excavations 

 or pits whence the material was quarried. Each mine was also 

 the site and the workshop of the skilled artificer. In many 

 places shafts two feet in diameter were met with, often filled up 

 with drifted sand, and surrounded by masses of excavated 



Fig. I.— View of shafts on the level terrace-tableland, near Camp XI., 1896; showing the excavated material 



heaped round the central work-place. 



{Frotn a Photograph by Mr. Seton-Karr.) 



material neatly arranged round them. Their depth does not 

 .seem to have been great, nor do the flint-workersappear to have 

 driven lateral galleries from the .shafts. Most of the mines had 

 a central work-place, round which the excavated material was 

 heaped, and where most of the implements were found. 



The next questions discussed are the probable age of the 

 Wady el Sheikh implements and how long the mines were 

 worked. As no help in these questions is obtainable from 

 legend or tradition, some clue is sought for in the patina or amount 

 of discoloration the flints exhibit, for, according to Sir John 

 Evans, •' the safest, and indeed the most common, indication of 

 an implement being really genuine is the alteration in the 

 structure of the flints . . . and the discoloration it has under- 

 gone." A large proportion of the flints from the Wady el 

 Sheikh are specimens broken in the making. In many instances 

 the two portions, in falling to the ground from the maker's 

 hands, dropped the one part with the upturned surface the 

 reverse of that of its fellow, with the result that when the 

 pieces are re-united the surfaces of the completed implement 



NO. 



590, VOL. 61] 



have each a moiety dark, the effect of exposure, and a moiety, 

 in striking contrast, of nearly the original light yellowish -grey 

 colour of the chert. In the two faces of the two halves every 

 shade of pati nation from black through shades of yellow to the 

 almost unchanged flint is to be found. Some gauge of the rate 

 of this " seonic tinting" is given by Prof. Flinders Petrie, who 

 states that " 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 

 [Nile] plateau. It is certain that only a faint tinge of brown is 

 produced on flints that are at least 7000 years old under like 

 conditions, and this may give a slight scale of the ages that 

 have passed since flint was worked here by paleolithic man." 

 Dated by this standard, the bulk of the Seton-Karr collection 

 ought to be many times 7000 years old. The great majority of 

 the specimens, even the deepest stained, 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, and others, in addition to their patination, have 

 the glossy rounded angles and edges generally considered 

 characteristic of palceoliths ; 

 there is nothing about them, 

 however, to point to their 

 being of a different age from 

 their associates in the same 

 workshop. All the imple- 

 ments were found round the 

 mines ; .some are rude, be- 

 cause unfinished, and some 

 are most beautifully flaked and 

 finished knives (Fig. 2). A 

 considerable number of the 

 flints are so close in material, 

 form and character to those 

 figured by Prof. Petrie from, 

 the Xllth Dynasty town of 

 Kahun, that there can be little 

 doubt that both sets were 

 made about the same centuries. 

 Many of the implements are 

 also of the same form as 

 those pictured in the proces.s 

 of manufacture on the walls of 

 Beni Hasan tombs belonging 

 to the same dynasty and 

 contemporaneous with the 

 tombs. A few of the Wady 

 el Sheikh instruments agree 

 with some figured by Petrie 

 as typical of the IVth Dynasty. 

 The age, therefore, of the 

 working of the quarries may 

 be from 3900 B.C., but more 

 probably from about the Xllth 

 Dyna.sty ; and consequently 

 there is provided a scale for 

 gauging the patination that 

 can be acquirec^ in that time. 

 The amount of discoloration 

 which appears also to vary 

 with the quality or constitu- 

 tion of the flint, and the nature of the surface on which it lay 

 exposed, would seem, according to the writer, therefore, to be 

 a very uncertain criterion of age. 



Hardly distinguishable from the flints of the Wady el Sheikh 

 are numerous specimens found lying oi^ the surface of the Nile 

 plateaux by Seton-Karr, and near Esna and Ballas by Petrie and 

 Quibell. "On the top of the 1400 feet plateau," the latter 

 authors record, " are great numbers of worked flints of palteo- 

 lithic type. . . . That the high plateau was the home of man 

 in palaeolithic times is shown by the worked flints lying scat- 

 tered around the centres where they ivere 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." Along 

 with the flints found in the Ballas desert, there were some 

 " rounded flints, all stained dark brown ; it is from such that 

 these worked flints have been formed, and the chips of working 

 were scatter id around.'" After stating these facts, Dr. Forbes 



