192 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 
long which were put together ‘ brick-fashion.’ No masts or sail- 
yards, however, could possibly be cut from any native Egyptian tree. 
In the Sidan at the present day masts are sometimes made by splicing 
together a number of small pieces of stint and binding them with ox-hide, 
but such masts are extremely liable to start in any gale, and they would 
be useless for sea-going ships. It may be doubted whether the art of 
building sea-going ships originated in Egypt. It may be doubted also 
whether the custom of burying the dead in wooden coffins originated in 
Egypt. In countries where a tree is a rarity a plank for a coffin is 
generally unknown. In the Admonitions of an Egyptian Sage written 
some time before 2000 B.c., at a period when there was internal strife in 
Egypt, the Sage laments that ‘ Men do not sail northwards to 
[Byb]-los* to-day. What shall we do for coniferous trees} for our 
mummies, with the produce of which priests are buried, and with the 
oil of which [chiefs] are embalmed as far as Keftiu? They come no 
more.’ This ancient Sage raises another anthropological question when 
he refers to the oil used for embalming. The only oils produced by 
native trees or shrubs in Egypt were olive oil, ben oil from the moringa, 
and castor oil from the castor-oil plant. The resins and oils used for 
embalming were principally those derived from pines and other coni- 
ferous trees. Egypt produced no kinds of incense trees or shrubs. The 
common incenses were pine resin, ladanum, and myrrh, and all these 
were imported. It is difficult to believe that the ceremonial use of 
incense arose in Higypt. 
These are a few of the questions raised by a study of the material 
relating to the origins of the ancient civilisation of Egypt. There are 
numbers of others that are waiting to be dealt with. Egypt is extra- 
ordinarily rich in material for the anthropologist. It is a storehouse 
full of the remains of man’s industry from pre-agricultural times right 
down to the present day. Almost every foot of ground hides some 
relic of bygone man. The climatic conditions prevailing there are excep- 
tional, and it is largely owing to the absence of rain that so full a record 
of man and his works has been preserved. For more than a century 
excavators have been busy in many parts of the country, but there is 
yet no sign that the soil is becoming exhausted; it is, in fact, almost 
daily yielding up its buried treasures. The past two or three decades have 
been prolific in surprises. Mines of hidden wealth have been unearthed 
where but a few years ago we only saw the sands and rocky defiles of the 
desert. Since we met at Hull last year, the most sensational archzo- 
logical discovery cf modern times has been made in a place that had 
been abandoned by many excavators as exhausted. This discovery, due 
to the untiring persistence of an Englishman, promises to yield results 
of extraordinary interest, but it will take years before they can be 
adequately published. Other discoveries have been made in Egypt 
during recent years which have opened out a vista of human history 
that we little dreamt of a quarter of a century ago. Three decades 
* This place-name ends -ny: the restoration [Xp-]ny is due to Sethe and 
‘suits the traces, the space and context quite admirably.—A. H. Gardiner, 
Lhe Admonitions of an Egyptian Sage, Leipzig, 1909, p. 33. 
+ The word is as, a generic one for pines, fir, &c. 
ab ay 
