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for use on the spot, perhaps in carving* stone from the neigli- 

 bouring quarries ; or they may have been sold in Helouan or 

 in Memphis, as they now are in Assiout and Cairo. Arrow- 

 heads are said to have been found at Helouan, but I saw none 

 of these, unless, indeed, some of the pointed flakes might 

 have been intended for this use. It is worthy of remark that 

 the desert near Helouan is less abundantly supplied with flint 

 nodules than most other places, so that the material may have 

 been brought from some distance. The flakes are usually 

 much discoloured on the surface, many of them being of a 

 kind of flint which blackens on weathering j but some of 

 them of a difierent kind of flint are comparatively fresh in 

 appearance. The principal locality is about half a mile south- 

 west of the present town, and apparently on the line of an old 

 track leading from the quarries to the river. (PI. II., Figs. 6, 7.) 

 A diflerent conclusion would be warranted if such worked 

 flints were found in old deposits, anterior to the times of 

 Egyptian civilisation. A case of this kind seems to be 

 furnished by the discovery, reported by General Pitt-Rivers, 

 in the Journal of the Anthropological Institute,* of flint 

 flakes in an old gravel at a place called by the natives 

 Jebel Assart, at the mouth of the ravine of Bab-el-Molook, 

 in which are the tombs of the kings, near Thebes. I have 

 examined this place with some care, and am convinced of the 

 antiquity of the gravel. It constitutes a stratified bed of 

 considerable area, 25 feet in thickness, and with intercalated 

 layers of sandy matter mixed with small stones. These 

 layers are entirely different from the Nile mud, and are made 

 up of fine debris of the Eocene rocks, with small stones and 

 broken flints. They indicate more tranquil deposition, pro- 

 ceeding in the intervals of the gravel deposits and under water. 

 General Pitt-Rivers refers to only one of these beds, but in the 

 deeper sections three may be observed (Fig. 1) . The whole mass 

 has been cemented by calcareous infiltration so as to constitute 

 a rock of some hardness. It is true it consists of the same 

 materials now washed down the ravine by the torrents caused 

 by winter rains, namely, partially-rounded masses of lime- 

 stone and flints, whole and broken, but it must have been 

 formed at a time when the ravine was steeper and less 

 excavated than at present, and probably subject to more 

 violent inundations, and when it must have carried its gravel 

 into a larger Nile than the present, or possibly into an arm of 

 the sea. It is, in all probability, one of the Pleistocene gravels 



* No, 39, May, 1882. 

 V 0, 



