Phillips,! ■ [May 21, 



Memphis, first became known about 1872, having come to the notice of Dr. 

 Keil, the director of the Sanatarium at that place. He wrote to the Ethno- 

 logical Society of Berlin, relating the circumslances attending their discov- 

 ery, and placed a collection of them in the Boulak Museum at Cairo. " The 

 nature of the materials composing the plateau at Helwan varies from layers 

 of fine mud to beds of coarse, angular debris," writes A. J. Jukes Browne, 

 Esq., in a communication to the Cambridge Antiquarian Society, read at the 

 meeting, held November 12, 1877, "and, in the railway cutting, beds of 

 sand and clay are to be seen banked up against the ridge of limestone 

 which rises up out of this valley. "The surface of the plateau is gener- 

 ally composed of loose sand, or stones and sand in place, compacted by 

 saline deposits from the thermal waters which here permeate the soil ; 

 and it is upon these surfaces, worn into irregular ridges or hollows, that 

 the flint flakes and tools are generally to be found. They do not occur 

 below the surface except where they have been covered up by subse- 

 quent sand drifts. In excavating these sand drifts, implements have been 

 met with at various depths, but none have ever been found in the beds of 

 mud and sand which have been brought down by the streams and are ex- 

 posed in the cuttings and diggings alongside of the railway. The normal 

 position of the implements is, therefore, upon the surface of the plain ; but it 

 is to be noticed that they chiefly occur overlooking the greater depressions 

 where the hardened ground may have existed as a surface for many hun- 

 dreds, or perhaps thousands, of years ; and there are at least five of these 

 spots where the flakes and implements occur in such abundance as to sug- 

 gest the idea that these were the actual localities where the work was car- 

 ried on, the very manufactories where the tools of the period were made. 

 The probability that such is the case is increased by the fact that the form 

 of the flakes and the nature of the instruments diff"er considerably at each 

 of the five places referred to. * * * 



"The principal forms that were found, were lance-heads, arrow-heads, 

 saws, long scrapers, thick scrapers, short knives, worked flakes, large 

 flakes, small flakes and one triangular tool. No heavy weapons were 

 found at Helwan, such as hammers, adzes, &c., but parallel cases have oc- 

 curred where assemblages of small flakes and scrapers have been found at 

 certain spots as if manufactured there, while there is an entire absence of 

 celts, and the larger kind of instruments. Mr. Sketchley states that there 

 is a great resemblance in shape between the Egyptian and the small 

 Suff'olk implements. The Helwan lance-heads are good specimens of flint 

 work, the whole surface being worked over, and the sides chipped into 

 serrated edges ; they are about three inches long, and the base is squared 

 and thinned ofl'for insertion in the handle. The best arrow-heads are also 

 well made, being of an elongately lanceolate form, the tag end exhibiting 

 two small nicks for the purpose of binding it on to the shaft, in the same 

 way as some of the American arrow-heads were secured. 



"But the saws are the most curious and interesting of the Helwan imple- 

 ments ; they vary from two to four inches in length, with one side or edge 



