History of Egypt, Chaldea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria in the Light of Recent Discovery Part 1

History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And a.s.syria In The Light Of Recent Discovery.

by L.W. King and H.R. Hall.

PREFACE

The present volume contains an account of the most important additions which have been made to our knowledge of the ancient history of Egypt and Western Asia during the few years which have elapsed since the publication of Prof. Maspero's _Histoire Ancienne des Peuples de l'Orient Cla.s.sique_, and includes short descriptions of the excavations from which these results have been obtained. It is in no sense a connected and continuous history of these countries, for that has already been written by Prof. Maspero, but is rather intended as an appendix or addendum to his work, briefly recapitulating and describing the discoveries made since its appearance. On this account we have followed a geographical rather than a chronological system of arrangement, but at the same time the attempt has been made to suggest to the mind of the reader the historical sequence of events.

At no period have excavations been pursued with more energy and activity, both in Egypt and Western Asia, than at the present time, and every season's work obliges us to modify former theories, and extends our knowledge of periods of history which even ten years ago were unknown to the historian. For instance, a whole chapter has been added to Egyptian history by the discovery of the Neolithic culture of the primitive Egyptians, while the recent excavations at Susa are revealing a hitherto totally unsuspected epoch of proto-Elamite civilization.

Further than this, we have discovered the relics of the oldest historical kings of Egypt, and we are now enabled to reconst.i.tute from material as yet unpublished the inter-relations of the early dynasties of Babylon. Important discoveries have also been made with regard to isolated points in the later historical periods. We have therefore attempted to include the most important of these in our survey of recent excavations and their results. We would again remind the reader that Prof. Maspero's great work must be consulted for the complete history of the period, the present volume being, not a connected history of Egypt and Western Asia, but a description and discussion of the manner in which recent discovery and research have added to and modified our conceptions of ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilization.

EGYPT AND MESOPOTAMIA

_In the Light of Recent Excavation and Research_

CHAPTER I--THE DISCOVERY OF PREHISTORIC EGYPT

During the last ten years our conception of the beginnings of Egyptian antiquity has profoundly altered. When Prof. Maspero published the first volume of his great _Histoire Ancienne des Peuples des l'Orient Cla.s.sique_, in 1895, Egyptian history, properly so called, still began with the Pyramid-builders, Sne-feru, Khufu, and Khafra (Cheops and Chephren), and the legendary lists of earlier kings preserved at Abydos and Sakkara were still quoted as the only source of knowledge of the time before the IVth Dynasty. Of a prehistoric Egypt nothing was known, beyond a few flint flakes gathered here and there upon the desert plateaus, which might or might not tell of an age when the ancestors of the Pyramid-builders knew only the stone tools and weapons of the primeval savage.

Now, however, the veil which has hidden the beginnings of Egyptian civilization from us has been lifted, and we see things, more or less, as they actually were, un.o.bscured by the traditions of a later day.

Until the last few years nothing of the real beginnings of history in either Egypt or Mesopotamia had been found; legend supplied the only material for the reconstruction of the earliest history of the oldest civilized nations of the globe. Nor was it seriously supposed that any relics of prehistoric Egypt or Mesopotamia ever would be found. The antiquity of the known history of these countries already appeared so great that n.o.body took into consideration the possibility of our discovering a prehistoric Egypt or Mesopotamia; the idea was too remote from practical work. And further, civilization in these countries had lasted so long that it seemed more than probable that all traces of their prehistoric age had long since been swept away. Yet the possibility, which seemed hardly worth a moment's consideration in 1895, is in 1905 an a.s.sured reality, at least as far as Egypt is concerned.

Prehistoric Babylonia has yet to be discovered. It is true, for example, that at Mukay-yar, the site of ancient Ur of the Chaldees, burials in earthenware coffins, in which the skeletons lie in the doubled-up position characteristic of Neolithic interments, have been found; but there is no doubt whatever that these are burials of a much later date, belonging, quite possibly, to the Parthian period. Nothing that may rightfully be termed prehistoric has yet been found in the Euphrates valley, whereas in Egypt prehistoric antiquities are now almost as well known and as well represented in our museums as are the prehistoric antiquities of Europe and America.

With the exception of a few palasoliths from the surface of the Syrian desert, near the Euphrates valley, not a single implement of the Age of Stone has yet been found in Southern Mesopotamia, whereas Egypt has yielded to us the most perfect examples of the flint-knapper's art known, flint tools and weapons more beautiful than the finest that Europe and America can show. The reason is not far to seek. Southern Mesopotamia is an alluvial country, and the ancient cities, which doubtless mark the sites of the oldest settlements in the land, are situated in the alluvial marshy plain between the Tigris and the Euphrates; so that all traces of the Neolithic culture of the country would seem to have disappeared, buried deep beneath city-mounds, clay and marsh. It is the same in the Egyptian Delta, a similar country; and here no traces of the prehistoric culture of Egypt have been found. The attempt to find them was made last year at Buto, which is known to be one of the most antique centres of civilization, and probably was one of the earliest settlements in Egypt, but without success. The infiltration of water had made excavation impossible and had no doubt destroyed everything belonging to the most ancient settlement. It is not going too far to predict that exactly the same thing will be found by any explorer who tries to discover a Neolithic stratum beneath a city-mound of Babylonia. There is little hope that prehistoric Chaldaea will ever be known to us. But in Egypt the conditions are different. The Delta is like Babylonia, it is true; but in the Upper Nile valley the river flows down with but a thin border of alluvial land on either side, through the rocky and hilly desert, the dry Sahara, where rain falls but once in two or three years. Antiquities buried in this soil in the most remote ages are preserved intact as they were first interred, until the modern investigator comes along to look for them. And it is on the desert margin of the valley that the remains of prehistoric Egypt have been found. That is the reason for their perfect preservation till our own day, and why we know prehistoric Egypt so well.

The chief work of Egyptian civilization was the proper irrigation of the alluvial soil, the turning of marsh into cultivated fields, and the reclamation of land from the desert for the purposes of agriculture.

Owing to the rainless character of the country, the only means of obtaining water for the crops is by irrigation, and where the fertilizing Nile water cannot be taken by means of ca.n.a.ls, there cultivation ends and the desert begins. Before Egyptian civilization, properly so called, began, the valley was a great marsh through which the Nile found its way north to the sea. The half-savage, stone-using ancestors of the civilized Egyptians hunted wild fowl, crocodiles, and hippopotami in the marshy valley; but except in a few isolated settlements on convenient mounds here and there (the forerunners of the later villages), they did not live there. Their settlements were on the dry desert margin, and it was here, upon low tongues of desert hill jutting out into the plain, that they buried their dead. Their simple shallow graves were safe from the flood, and, but for the depredations of jackals and hyenas, here they have remained intact till our own day, and have yielded up to us the facts from which we have derived our knowledge of prehistoric Egypt. Thus it is that we know so much of the Egyptians of the Stone Age, while of their contemporaries in Mesopotamia we know nothing, nor is anything further likely to be discovered.

But these desert cemeteries, with their crowds of oval shallow graves, covered by only a few inches of surface soil, in which the Neolithic Egyptians lie crouched up with their flint implements and polished pottery beside them, are but monuments of the later age of prehistoric Egypt. Long before the Neolithic Egyptian hunted his game in the marshes, and here and there essayed the work of reclamation for the purposes of an incipient agriculture, a far older race inhabited the valley of the Nile. The written records of Egyptian civilization go back four thousand years before Christ, or earlier, and the Neolithic Age of Egypt must go back to a period several thousand years before that. But we can now go back much further still, to the Palaeolithic Age of Egypt.

At a time when Europe was still covered by the ice and snows of the Glacial Period, and man fought as an equal, hardly yet as a superior, with cave-bear and mammoth, the Palaeolithic Egyptians lived on the banks of the Nile. Their habitat was doubtless the desert slopes, often, too, the plateaus themselves; but that they lived entirely upon the plateaus, high up above the Nile marsh, is improbable. There, it is true, we find their flint implements, the great pear-shaped weapons of the types of Ch.e.l.les, St. Acheul, and Le Moustier, types well known to all who are acquainted with the flint implements of the "Drift" in Europe. And it is there that the theory, generally accepted hitherto, has placed the habitat of the makers and users of these implements.

The idea was that in Palaeolithic days, contemporary with the Glacial Age of Northern Europe and America, the climate of Egypt was entirely different from that of later times and of to-day. Instead of dry desert, the mountain plateaus bordering the Nile valley were supposed to have been then covered with forest, through which flowed countless streams to feed the river below. It was suggested that remains of these streams were to be seen in the side ravines, or wadis, of the Nile valley, which run up from the low desert on the river level into the hills on either hand. These wadis undoubtedly show extensive traces of strong water action; they curve and twist as the streams found their easiest way to the level through the softer strata, they are heaped up with great water-worn boulders, they are hollowed out where waterfalls once fell.

They have the appearance of dry watercourses, exactly what any mountain burns would be were the water-supply suddenly cut off for ever, the climate altered from rainy to eternal sun-glare, and every plant and tree blasted, never to grow again. Acting on the supposition that this idea was a correct one, most observers have concluded that the climate of Egypt in remote periods was very different from the dry, rainless one now obtaining. To provide the water for the wadi streams, heavy rainfall and forests are desiderated. They were easily supplied, on the hypothesis. Forests clothed the mountain plateaus, heavy rains fell, and the water rushed down to the Nile, carving out the great watercourses which remain to this day, bearing testimony to the truth. And the flints, which the Palaeolithic inhabitants of the plateau-forests made and used, still lie on the now treeless and sun-baked desert surface.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 007.jpg THE BED OF AN ANCIENT WATERCOURSE IN THE WADIYeN, THEBES.]

This is certainly a very weak conclusion. In fact, it seriously damages the whole argument, the water-courses to the contrary notwithstanding.

The palaeoliths are there. They can be picked up by any visitor. There they lie, great flints of the Drift types, just like those found in the gravel-beds of England and Belgium, on the desert surface where they were made. Undoubtedly where they were made, for the places where they lie are the actual ancient flint workshops, where the flints were chipped. Everywhere around are innumerable flint chips and perfect weapons, burnt black and patinated by ages of sunlight. We are taking one particular spot in the hills of Western Thebes as an example, but there are plenty of others, such as the Wadi esh-Shekh on the right bank of the Nile opposite Maghagha, whence Mr. H. Seton-Karr has brought back specimens of flint tools of all ages from the Palaeolithic to the Neolithic periods.

The Palaeolithic flint workshops on the Theban hills have been visited of late years by Mr. Seton-Karr, by Prof. Schweinfurth, Mr. Allen Sturge, and Dr. Blanckenhorn, by Mr. Portch, Mr. Ayrton, and Mr. Hall. The weapons ill.u.s.trated here were found by Messrs. Hall and Ayrton, and are now preserved in the British Museum. Among these flints shown we notice two fine specimens of the pear-shaped type of St. Acheul, with curious adze-shaped implements of primitive type to left and right. Below, to the right, is a very primitive instrument of Ch.e.l.lean type, being merely a sharpened pebble. Above, to left and right, are two specimens of the curious half-moon-shaped instruments which are characteristic of the Theban flint field and are hardly known elsewhere. All have the beautiful brown patina, which only ages of sunburn can give. The "poignard" type to the left, at the bottom of the plate, is broken off short.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 008.jpg Palaeolithic Implements of the Quaternary Period.

From the desert plateau and slopes west of Thebes.]

In the smaller ill.u.s.tration we see some remarkable types: two sc.r.a.pers or knives with strongly marked "bulb of percussion" (the spot where the flint-knapper struck and from which the flakes flew off), a very regular _coup-de-poing_ which looks almost like a large arrowhead, and on the right a much weathered and patinated sc.r.a.per which must be of immemorial age.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 009.jpg (right): PALAEOLITHIC IMPLEMENTS. From Man, March, 1905.]

This came from the top plateau, not from the slopes (or subsidiary plateaus at the head of the _wadis_), as did the great St. Acheulian weapons. The circular object is very remarkable: it is the half of the ring of a "morpholith "(a round flinty accretion often found in the Theban limestone) which has been split, and the split (flat) side carefully bevelled. Several of these interesting objects have been found in conjunction with Palaeolithic implements at Thebes. No doubt the flints lie on the actual surface where they were made. No later water action has swept them away and covered them with gravel, no later human habitation has hidden them with successive deposits of soil, no gradual deposit of dust and rubbish has buried them deep. They lie as they were left in the far-away Palaeolithic Age, and they have lain there till taken away by the modern explorer.

But this is not the case with all the Palaeolithic flints of Thebes. In the year 1882 Maj.-Gen. Pitt-Rivers discovered Palaeolithic flints in the deposit of diluvial detritus which lies between the cultivation and the mountains on the west bank of the Nile opposite Luxor. Many of these are of the same type as those found on the surface of the mountain plateau which lies at the head of the great _wadi_ of the Tombs of the Kings, while the diluvial deposit is at its mouth. The stuff of which the detritus is composed evidently came originally from the high plateau, and was washed down, with the flints, in ancient times.

This is quite conceivable, but how is it that the flints left behind on the plateau remain on the original ancient surface? How is it conceivable that if (on the old theory) these plateaus were in Palaeolithic days clothed with forest, the Palaeolithic flints could even in a single instance remain undisturbed from Palaeolithic times to the present day, when the forest in which they were made and the forest soil on which they reposed have entirely disappeared? If there were woods and forests On the heights, it would seem impossible that we should find, as we do, Palaeolithic implements lying in situ on the desert surface, around the actual manufactories where they were made. Yet if the constant rainfall and the vegetation of the Libyan desert area in Palaeolithic days is all a myth (as it most probably is), how came the embedded palaeoliths, found by Gen. Pitt-Rivers, in the bed of diluvial detritus which is apparently _debris_ from the plateau brought down by the Palaeolithic _wadi_ streams?

Water erosion has certainly formed the Theban _wadis_. But this water erosion was probably not that which would be the result of perennial streams flowing down from wooded heights, but of torrents like those of to-day, which fill the _wadis_ once in three years or so after heavy rain, but repeated at much closer intervals. We may in fact suppose just so much difference in meteorological conditions as would make it possible for sudden rain-storms to occur over the desert at far more frequent intervals than at present. That would account for the detritus bed at the mouth of the _wadi_, and its embedded flints, and at the same time maintain the general probability of the idea that the desert plateaus were desert in Palaeolithic days as now, and that early man only knapped his flints up there because he found the flint there. He himself lived on the slopes and nearer the marsh.

This new view seems to be much sounder and more probable than the old one, maintained by Flinders Petrie and Blanckenhorn, according to which the high plateau was the home of man in Palaeolithic times, when the rainfall, as shown by the valley erosion and waterfalls, must have caused an abundant vegetation on the plateau, where man could live and hunt his game. [*Petrie, Nagada and Ballas, p. 49.] Were this so, it is patent that the Palaeolithic flints could not have been found on the desert surface as they are. Mr. H. J. L. Beadnell, of the Geological Survey of Egypt, to whom we are indebted for the promulgation of the more modern and probable view, says: "Is it certain that the high plateau was then clothed with forests? What evidence is there to show that it differed in any important respect from its present aspect? And if, as I suggest, desert conditions obtained then as now, and man merely worked his flints along the edges of the plateaus overlooking the Nile valley, I see no reason why flint implements, dating even from Palaeolithic times should not in favourable cases still be found in the spots where they were left, surrounded by the flakes struck off in manufacture. On the flat plateaus the occasional rains which fall--once in three or four years--can effect but little transport of material, and merely lower the general level by dissolving the underlying limestone, so that the plateau surface is left with a coating of nodules and blocks of insoluble flint and chert. Flint implements might thus be expected to remain in many localities for indefinite periods, but they would certainly become more or less 'patinated,' pitted on the surface, and rounded at the angles after long exposure to heat, cold, and blown sand." This is exactly the case of the Palaeolithic flint tools from the desert plateau.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 012.jpg UPPER DESERT PLATEAU, WHERE PALEOLITHIC IMPLEMENTS ARE FOUND, Thebes: 1,400 leet above the Nile.]

We do not know whether Palaeolithic man in Egypt was contemporary with the cave-man of Europe. We have no means of gauging the age of the Palaeolithic Egyptian weapons, as we have for the Neolithic period.

The historical (dynastic) period of Egyptian annals began with the unification of the kingdom under one head somewhere about 4500 B.C. At that time copper as well as stone weapons were used, so that we may say that at the beginning of the historical age the Egyptians were living in the "Chalcolithic" period. We can trace the use of copper back for a considerable period anterior to the beginning of the Ist Dynasty, so that we shall probably not be far wrong if we do not bring down the close of the purely Neolithic Age in Egypt--the close of the Age of Stone, properly so called--later than +5000 B.C. How far back in the remote ages the transition period between the Palaeolithic and Neolithic Ages should be placed, it is utterly impossible to say. The use of stone for weapons and implements continued in Egypt as late as the time of the XIIth Dynasty, about 2500-2000 B.C. But these XIIth Dynasty stone implements show by their forms how late they are in the history of the Stone Age. The axe heads, for instance, are in form imitations of the copper and bronze axe heads usual at that period; they are stone imitations of metal, instead of the originals on whose model the metal weapons were formed. The flint implements of the XIIth Dynasty were a curious survival from long past ages. After the time of the XIIth Dynasty stone was no longer used for tools or weapons, except for the sacred rite of making the first incision in the dead bodies before beginning the operations of embalming; for this purpose, as Herodotus tells us, an "Ethiopian stone" was used. This was no doubt a knife of flint or chert, like those of the Neolithic ancestors of the Egyptians, and the continued use of a stone knife for this one purpose only is a very interesting instance of a ceremonial survival. We may compare the wigs of British judges.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 014.jpg FLINT KNIFE]

We have no specimen of a flint knife which can definitely be a.s.serted to have belonged to an embalmer, but of the archaistic flint weapons of the XIIth Dynasty we have several specimens. They were found by Prof. Petrie at the place named by him "Kahun," the site of a XIIth Dynasty town built near the pyramid of King Usertsen (or Senusret) II at Illahun, at the mouth of the ca.n.a.l leading from the Nile valley into the oasis-province of the Payyum. These Kahun flints, and others of probably the same period found by Mr. Seton-Karr at the very ancient flint works in the Wadi esh-Shekh, are of very coa.r.s.e and poor workmans.h.i.+p as compared with the stone-knapping triumphs of the late Neolithic and early Chalcolithic periods. The delicacy of the art had all been lost.

But the best flint knives of the early period--dating to just a little before the time of the Ist Dynasty, when flint-working had attained its apogee, and copper had just begun to be used--are undoubtedly the most remarkable stone weapons ever made in the world. The grace and utility of the form, the delicacy of the fluted chipping on the side, and the minute care with which the tiny serrations of the cutting edge, serrations so small that often they can hardly be seen with the naked eye, are made, can certainly not be parallelled elsewhere. The art of flint-knapping reached its zenith in Ancient Egypt. The specimen ill.u.s.trated has a handle covered with gold decorated with incised designs representing animals.

The prehistoric Egyptians may also fairly be said to have attained greater perfection than other peoples in the Neolithic stage of culture, in other arts besides the making of stone tools and weapons. Their pottery is of remarkable perfection. Now that the sites of the Egyptian prehistoric settlements have been so thoroughly explored by competent archaeologists (and, unhappily, as thoroughly pillaged by incompetent natives), this prehistoric Egyptian pottery has become extremely well known. In fact, it is so common that good specimens may be bought anywhere in Egypt for a few piastres. Most museums possess sets of this pottery, of which great quant.i.ties have been brought back from Egypt by Prof. Petrie and other explorers. It is of very great interest, artistically as well as historically. The potter's wheel was not yet invented, and all the vases, even those of the most perfect shape, were built up by hand. The perfection of form attained without the aid of the wheel is truly marvellous.

The commonest type of this pottery is a red polished ware vase with black top, due to its having been baked mouth downward in a fire, the ashes of which, according to Prof. Petrie, deoxidized the haemat.i.te burnis.h.i.+ng, and so turned the red colour to black. "In good examples the haemat.i.te has not only been reduced to black magnetic oxide, but the black has the highest polish, as seen on fine Greek vases. This is probably due to the formation of carbonyl gas in the smothered fire.

This gas acts as a solvent of magnetic oxide, and hence allows it to a.s.sume a new surface, like the gla.s.sy surface of some marbles subjected to solution in water." This black and red ware appears to be the most ancient prehistoric Egyptian pottery known. Later in date are a red ware and a black ware with rude geometrical incised designs, imitating basketwork, and with the incised lines filled in with white. Later again is a buff ware, either plain or decorated with wavy lines, concentric circles, and elaborate drawings of boats sailing on the Nile, ostriches, fish, men and women, and so on.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 017.jpg (right) BUFF WARE VASE, Predynastic period, before 4000 B.C.]

These designs are in deep red. With this elaborate pottery the Neolithic ceramic art of Egypt reached its highest point; in the succeeding period (the beginning of the historic age) there was a decline in workmans.h.i.+p, exhibiting clumsy forms and bad colour, and it is not until the time of the IVth Dynasty that good pottery (a fine polished red) is once more found. Meanwhile the invention of glazed pottery, which was unknown to the prehistoric Egyptians, had been made (before the beginning of the Ist Dynasty). The unglazed ware of the first three dynasties was bad, but the new invention of light blue glazed faience (not porcelain properly so called) seems to have made great progress, and we possess fine specimens at the beginning of the Ist Dynasty. The prehistoric Egyptians were also proficient in other arts. They carved ivory and they worked gold, which is known to have been almost the first metal worked by man; certainly in Egypt it was utilized for ornament even before copper was used for work. We may refer to the ill.u.s.tration of a flint knife with gold handle, already given. [* See ill.u.s.tration.]

The date of the actual introduction of copper for tools and weapons into Egypt is uncertain, but it seems probable that copper was occasionally used at a very early period. Copper weapons have been found in pre-dynastic graves beside the finest buff pottery with elaborate red designs, so that we may say that when the flint-working and pottery of the Neolithic Egyptians had reached its zenith, the use of copper was already known, and copper weapons were occasionally employed. We can thus speak of the "Chalcolithic" period in Egypt as having already begun at that time, no doubt several centuries before the beginning of the historical or dynastic age. Strictly speaking, the Egyptians remained in the "Chalcolithic" period till the end of the XIIth Dynasty, but in practice it is best to speak of this period, when the word is used, as extending from the time of the finest flint weapons and pottery of the prehistoric age (when the "Neolithic" period may be said to close) till about the IId or IIId Dynasty. By that time the "Bronze," or, rather, "Copper," Age of Egypt had well begun, and already stone was not in common use.

The prehistoric pottery is of the greatest value to the archaeologist, for with its help some idea may be obtained of the succession of periods within the late Neolithic-Chalcolithic Age. The enormous number of prehistoric graves which have been examined enables us to make an exhaustive comparison of the different kinds of pottery found in them, so that we can arrange them in order according to pottery they contained. By this means we obtain an idea of the development of different types of pottery, and the sequence of the types. Thus it is that we can say with some degree of confidence that the black and red ware is the most ancient form, and that the buff with red designs is one of the latest forms of prehistoric pottery. Other objects found in the graves can be cla.s.sified as they occur with different pottery types.

With the help of the pottery we can thus gain a more or less reliable conspectus of the development of the late "Neolithic" culture of Egypt.

This system of "sequence-dating" was introduced by Prof. Petrie, and is certainly very useful. It must not, however, be pressed too far or be regarded as an iron-bound system, with which all subsequent discoveries must be made to fit in by force. It is not to be supposed that all prehistoric pottery developed its series of types in an absolutely orderly manner without deviations or throws-back. The work of man's hands is variable and eccentric, and does not develop or evolve in an undeviating course as the work of nature does. It is a mistake, very often made by anthropologists and archaeologists, who forget this elementary fact, to a.s.sume "curves of development," and so forth, or semi-savage culture, on absolutely even and regular lines. Human culture has not developed either evenly or regularly, as a matter of fact.

Therefore we cannot always be sure that, because the Egyptian black and red pottery does not occur in graves with buff and red, it is for this reason absolutely earlier in date than the latter. Some of the development-sequences may in reality be contemporary with others instead of earlier, and allowance must always be made for aberrations and reversions to earlier types.

This caveat having been entered, however, we may provisionally accept Prof. Petrie's system of sequence-dating as giving the best cla.s.sification of the prehistoric antiquities according to development.

So it may fairly be said that, as far as we know, the black and red pottery ("sequence-date 30--") is the most ancient Neolithic Egyptian ware known; that the buff and red did not begin to be used till about "sequence-date 45;" that bone and ivory carvings were commonest in the earlier period ("sequence-dates 30-50"); that copper was almost unknown till "sequence-date 50," and so on. The arbitrary numbers used range from 30 to 80, in order to allow for possible earlier and later additions, which may be rendered necessary by the progress of discovery.

The numbers are of course as purely arbitrary and relative as those of the different thermometrical systems, but they afford a convenient system of arrangement. The products of the prehistoric Egyptians are, so to speak, distributed on a conventional plan over a scale numbered from 30 to 80, 30 representing the beginning and 80 the close of the term, so far as its close has as yet been ascertained. It is probable that "sequence-date 80" more or less accurately marks the beginning of the dynastic or historical period.

This hypothetically chronological cla.s.sification is, as has been said, due to Prof. Petrie, and has been adopted by Mr. Randall-Maclver and other students of prehistoric Egypt in their work. [*_El Amra and Abydos_, Egypt Exploration Fund, 1902.] To Prof. Petrie then is due the credit of systematizing the study of Egyptian prehistoric antiquities; but the further credit of having _discovered_ these antiquities themselves and settled their date belongs not to him but to the distinguished French archaeologist, M. J. de Morgan, who was for several years director of the museum at Giza, and is now chief of the French archaeological delegation in Persia, which has made of late years so many important discoveries. The proof of the prehistoric date of this cla.s.s of antiquities was given, not by Prof. Petrie after his excavations at Dendera in 1897-8, but by M. de Morgan in his volume, _Recherches sur les Origines de l'egypte: l'age de la Pierre et les Metaux_, published in 1895-6. In this book the true chronological position of the prehistoric antiquities was pointed out, and the existence of an Egyptian Stone Age finally decided. M. de Morgan's work was based on careful study of the results of excavations carried on for several years by the Egyptian government in various parts of Egypt, in the course of which a large number of cemeteries of the primitive type had been discovered. It was soon evident to M. de Morgan that these primitive graves, with their unusual pottery and flint implements, could be nothing less than the tombs of the prehistoric Egyptians, the Egyptians of the Stone Age.

Objects of the prehistoric period had been known to the museums for many years previously, but owing to the uncertainty of their provenance and the absence of knowledge of the existence of the primitive cemeteries, no scientific conclusions had been arrived at with regard to them; and it was not till the publication of M. de Morgan's book that they were recognized and cla.s.sified as prehistoric. The necropoles investigated by M. de Morgan and his a.s.sistants extended from Kawamil in the north, about twenty miles north of Abydos, to Edfu in the south. The chief cemeteries between these two points were those of Bat Allam, Saghel el-Baglieh, el-'Amra, Nakada, Tkh, and Gebelen. All the burials were of simple type, a.n.a.logous to those of the Neolithic races in the rest of the world. In a shallow, oval grave, excavated often but a few inches below the surface of the soil, lay the body, cramped up with the knees to the chin, sometimes in a rough box of pottery, more often with only a mat to cover it. Ready to the hand of the dead man were his flint weapons and tools, and the usual red and black, or buff and red, pots lay beside him; originally, no doubt, they had been filled with the funeral meats, to sustain the ghost in the next world. Occasionally a simple copper weapon was found. With the body were also buried slate palettes for grinding the green eye-paint which the Egyptians loved even at this early period. These are often carved to suggest the forms of animals, such as birds, bats, tortoises, goats, etc.; on others are fantastic creatures with two heads. Combs of bone, too, are found, ornamented in a similar way with birds' or goats' heads, often double.