EGYPT IN THE NEOLITHIC AND ARCHAIC PERIODS

 

CHAPTER.

THE PREDYNASTIC EGYPTIANS.

 

Until within the last few years the writer who set out to gather together the facts concerning the various great periods of Egyptian history, with the view of placing before his readers a connected sketch of the most important events which took place in the Valley of the Nile between the Fourth Cataract and the Mediterranean Sea, was compelled to state unhesitatingly that Egyptological science possessed no exact knowledge concerning the origin of the people who have been universally called “Egyptians.” It was generally assumed that they were not indigenous, but hardly any two Egyptologists agreed as to the site of their original home, and whilst one authority declared unhesitatingly that the Egyptians came from Central or North-Eastern Asia, another placed their probable home in some country far to the south of that portion of the Nile Valley which is commonly called “Egypt,” and another maintained that some tract of land lying to the west of the Nile in Northern Africa must be regarded as their true home. Each authority produced proofs in support of his assertion, and each group of proofs was regarded as satisfactory evidence by those who accepted the theory which they were intended to support.

The various theories put forward by competent men were based upon:—(1) The scientific examination of the mummified remains of the historical Egyptians; (2) historical and geographical information derived from the hieroglyphic inscriptions; (3) the philological peculiarities of the language as exhibited by the hieroglyphic texts; and (4) statements made by ancient chronographers and historians.

The evidence derived from the statements referred to under No. 4 was, of course, only of scientific value when supported by evidence derived from any or all of the classes of information summarized in Nos. 1, 2, and 3. The researches which have been made since the times when the main theories about the original home of the Egyptians were propounded show that in each of them many of the details were correct, and that their authors would have arrived at right conclusions had their deductions been based upon a larger number of facts, and upon a wider field of examination and information. Unfortunately, however, the field available for examination was limited, and all the necessary facts were not forthcoming, and the pity is that the early writers on Egyptology assumed that they had solved a number of -far-reaching problems in Egyptology when it was evident to all unbiased observers and honest enquirers that they still lacked the information which could only be obtained from data that were then non-available. Speaking broadly, the propounders of theories were hampered by their own preconceived views, and also by ideas derived from the works of Scriptural and classical writers; and their difficulties were increased greatly by their own efforts to make the evidence derived from the ancient Egyptian native writings “square” with that which they obtained from foreign sources.

Side by side with the question of the site of the original home of the Egyptians it was necessary to discuss the cognate subjects of early Egyptian chronology and the language of the primitive Egyptians, and the views and opinions put forward by writers on these matters were as conflicting as those which existed on the original home. Some held that the language of the early Egyptians was of Aryan origin, others declared it to be closely allied to the Semitic dialects, especially to those belonging to the northern group, i.e., Hebrew, Syriac, and Chaldee, and others claimed for it a Berber, or Ethiopian, or Libyan, or Central African origin, according to individual fancy or observation.

On early Egyptian chronology opinion was hopelessly divided, the principal reason being that many investi­gators attempted to confine ‘the whole period of Egyptian dynastic history within the limits assigned to Old Testament history by the impossible system of Archbishop Usher. Those who did this lost sight of the fact that they were not allowing sufficient time for the rise and growth and development of Egyptian civilization, and they wrote as if they thought that the wonderfully advanced state at which the religion, and art, and sculpture, and architecture, and education, and government of ancient Egypt had arrived at the beginning of the IVth Dynasty had been reached after the lapse of a few centuries. No system of chronology which may at present be devised can be accurate in the modern acceptation of the term, and none can ever, with truth, pretend to be approximately so, except in respect of isolated periods of time of relatively limited duration. But the system which will have the best chance of survival, and at the same time be the most correct, seems, judging by the evidence before us, to be that which will take into clue consideration the extreme antiquity of civilization of one kind and another in the Valley of the Nile, and which will not be fettered by views based upon the opinions of those who would limit the existence of the civilization of ancient Egypt to a period of about 3000 years.

Until the year 1891 the writer in favour of assuming a high antiquity for ancient Egyptian civilization was obliged to rely for his proofs upon the evidence furnished by the inscriptions, and upon deductions based on information supplied by texts written upon papyri, but, thanks to the labours of the recent excavators who have examined and cleared out a number of the predynastic cemeteries in Egypt, it is now possible to produce objects of various kinds which prove beyond all doubt that Egyptian civilization is older by several thousands of years than many Egyptologists have wished to admit, and that the existence of man in the Valley of the Nile may be traced back even to the Palaeolithic Period in Egypt. But before passing on to the consideration of the predynastic Egyptian it will be well to summarize briefly the principal facts in connection with the important excavations which have produced such remarkable results.

It will be remembered that between the years 1870 and 1890 there appeared from time to time in the hands of dealers in Egyptian antiquities numbers of rude figures of animals made of green slate, with inlaid eyes formed of bone rings, and little groups of earthenware vases, painted in red, with unusual designs. Specimens of these were purchased by travellers and others, and certain examples were acquired, through the late Rev. Greville Chester, B.A., by the British Museum. Thus a large, flat, green slate figure of a horned animal, with inlaid eyes (No. 35,049), was purchased in June, 1871; a figure of a sheep, in the same material (No. 20,910), in October, 1886; a green slate object, belonging to the class which has been wrongly called “palettes” (No. 21,899), in July, 1887 ; and a green slate bat, with outstretched wings (No. 21,901), in the same year. Among the painted vases which were acquired in 1881 may be mentioned a little two-handled vase, ornamented with red wavy lines (No. 35,050); and two black and red earthenware vases, and two earthenware pots with most unusual ornamentations, which were presented to the British Museum by the Egypt Exploration Fund in 1885 (Nos. 22,185, 22,186, 22,173, and 22,200). Besides these there remain to, be enumerated a small earthenware vase ornamented with series of concentric rings painted in red (No. 26,411), and a number of flints and small green slate objects, which have not as yet been satisfactorily identified. The provenance of many of these objects was well known, viz., Gebelen (a town situated on the left bank of the Nile, about 470 miles south of Cairo, which marks the site of the Crocodilopolis of the Greeks) and the neighbourhood of Abydos. Opinions differed as to the age of the green slate figures of animals and the earthenware vases ; some Egyptologists boldly declared the former to be “clumsy forgeries” and the latter to be the product of the Roman period, and others believed both classes of objects to be the work of a non-Egyptian people, who, for some reason or other, had settled in Egypt during dynastic times.

About the year 1890 it became known that certain natives in Egypt had discovered large quantities of pottery, i.e., vases, jars, bowls, saucers, etc., some being of most unusual shapes, and others being ornamented with unusual designs. The decorations on the pottery consisted chiefly of series of concentric rings, wavy lines, which were probably intended to represent water, and figures of a number of objects which could not then be identified, traced in red paint. Among this pottery were a large number of vessels made of red and black earthenware, the upper parts being black and the lower parts red, and it was generally agreed that these, at least, belonged to no comparatively modern period like the Roman. Subsequent inquiries revealed the fact that pottery of this kind was always found in graves of a certain class, which seem to have been quite unknown to anyone except the native dealers in antiquities in Egypt, and little by little the characteristics of such graves became known generally. The most important variation in the system of sepulture employed by those who made the graves from that in use among the historical Egyptians was in the preparation of the body for burial and its disposal in the tomb. As we shall return to this subject later on, there is no necessity to go into details here, and it will be sufficient to say that the bodies which were found in the graves mentioned above were not mummified, that they were sometimes dismembered, and that when discovered in a perfect state they were always resting on their left sides, with their knees drawn up on a level with their chins, and their hands were raised to their faces almost as if in an attitude of prayer or adoration.

Little by little it became clear that graves containing bodies which had been buried in this fashion were to be found in many parts of Egypt, and that they existed in such large numbers that it was almost impossible for them to be the remains of any small, isolated body of settlers in Egypt, or of an unimportant section of the old population of that country.

Meanwhile the natives in Egypt had excavated with great thoroughness some of the sites where such graves were found in abundance, and many of the older men among them, having learned exactly what class of antiquity was being demanded by European savants and archaeologists, remembered that flint knives of fine workmanship, and vases and vessels of earthenware made in various shapes and painted in red with concentric circles and wavy lines, had been found near Abydos, and at Nakada, and Gebelen, and other places, and they set to work to obtain permission to dig on these sites. Most of the applications for licenses to dig made by natives were refused by the authorities, and comparatively little was done in the matter of excavating these curious graves until the end of 1894, when Professor Petrie decided to make excavations on a large scale on a site which lay along “the edge of the desert, between Ballas and Naqada. This district is about thirty miles north of Thebes, and on the western side of the Nile.” In the course of the winter of 1894-95 he “recorded the plans and contents of nearly three thousand graves and two towns ... in the four or five months of work”; a vast quantity of pottery and large numbers of other objects were found in the course of the excavations on this site, and thus much material became available for study. To the facts already known the following details were added:—The graves were often made in the gravel shoals of the stream courses; the typical tombs were vertical pits, and the “pit in all wealthy graves was roofed over with “beams and brushwood; in place of preserving the body intact and embalming it, the bodies are usually more or less cut up and destroyed; in place of burying at full length, with head-rest and mirror, the bodies are all contracted and accompanied by many jars of ashes.

“The knees are always sharply bent at 45° to the thighs, or else nearly parallel; while the thighs are always at right angles to the body, or even more drawn up so that the knees touch the elbows. The arms are always bent, with the hands placed together before the face or the neck. In a few cases the body is laid on the back and the knees bent sharply, so that the legs are folded up together; or else both knees and hips are bent sharply, so that the legs are folded up on either side of the body. The direction of interment was as constant as the attitude ... the body lay on the left side, facing the west, with the head to the south and the feet to the north.”

From an examination of the graves which he excavated Professor Petrie concluded that:—

1. The skull was often intentionally removed before burial.

2. The skull was separately placed in the grave, perhaps some time subsequent to the burial.

3. The lower arms and hands were often removed before burial.

4. Some­times the trunk was partly cut to pieces before burial.

5. The whole body was sometimes dismembered completely before burial, and artificially arranged.

6. Bodies were sometimes—with all respect—cut up and partly eaten.

About a year later, that is in the winter of 1895-96, M. Amelineau was sent to Egypt at the instance of M. le Marquis de Biron and his friends M. le Comte Henri de la Bassetière and M. Sigismond Bardac, and he began to make excavations on a large scale at Abydos, where, notwithstanding the vast clearances which had been made by Mariette, a great deal of work needed to be done. Mariette excavated with thoroughness the temples of Seti I and Rameses II, but it is quite clear that he never recognized the real antiquity of the site nor even suspected the existence there of antiquities belonging to a period earlier than the Vlth Dynasty. As M. Amélineau has described at great length the results of his labours at Abydos, it is only necessary here to say that he discovered a number of graves of the same kind as those which Professor Petrie had excavated at Nakada, and in one wherein the body had escaped destruction he saw that it lay on its side in the position which has already been described; he also found large numbers of stone jars and earthenware vessels. The pottery he described as coarse, and the decorations upon the various vases he considered to be quite primitive, and to have been designed by men who were still “trying their brush” and educating themselves in artistic matters.

In the winter of 1896-97 M. Amélineau continued his excavations in the neighbourhood of Abydos, and he was rewarded by the discovery of a large and very important tomb, in the chambers of which he found a variety of objects, i.e., fragments of metal, metal tools, flints, pottery, alabaster and marble jars, etc.; he believed this tomb to date from a period anterior to that of the tombs which he had found during the previous winter.

In the month of March, 1897, another worker entered the field, and M. J. de Morgan, Directeur General des Antiquités de l’Egypte, decided to examine for himself some of the cemeteries where graves of the kind which has already been described were to be found. The spot selected by him for excavating was Nakada, a locality already well known as a source of supply of the curious pottery, which had by this time become tolerably common; according to M. de Morgan, a portion of the district had already been explored by Professor Petrie two years previously, but the explored portion only included the cemeteries of Tukh and Ballas, and the region to the south of Tukh was virgin soil. Two cemeteries were attacked, the one to the south, which belonged to the indigenous inhabitants of Egypt, and the one lying at a distance of a few miles to the north, which contained the tombs of the early Egyptians. Important results attended these excavations, for in a little hill situated to the north of the northern necropolis the remains of a monument built of crude bricks were found, and M. de Morgan was fully convinced that it dated from one of the most ancient periods of Egyptian civilization. The walls and other parts of the building exhibited traces of fire, and M. de Morgan believed that an attempt had been made to destroy the building by fire some time after it had been finished. M. Amélineau had found at Abydos a number of tombs to destroy which by fire an attempt seemed to have been made, and this apparently shocking work he attributed to the Coptic spoilers of tombs, who, at the beginning of their career as Christians, set out wilfully to destroy the monuments of the ancient Egyptians whom they called heathen. His views on this subject were at first shared by M. de Morgan, but subsequently he rejected them, for he found abundant proof that whatever damage had been done to the tombs by fire had been done in very ancient times, and indeed it was soon clear to his satisfaction that such tombs were deliberately set on fire by the friends and relatives of the deceased when they laid him in the tomb which had been specially built for him. Large numbers of vases in stone and other materials had been placed in the various chambers of the tomb, but nearly all of them were found to be broken, and M. de Morgan, on examination of the fragments, decided that they were broken and scattered about in the tomb before it was set on fire in remote days at the time of the funeral. The breaking of the vases and vessels was not the work of tomb robbers, for pieces of the same vase were found in different rooms, and it is well known that among many peoples the custom of breaking vessels of pottery, and figures of various kinds, at the time of the funeral is observed; had the breakages been the work of robbers, the various pieces belonging to one jar would have been found together, for they would never have taken the trouble to scatter them.

Of the identification of the builder of the great tomb which M. de Morgan discovered we need not speak here, and as he himself has described it and given a list of the objects which he found therein, we may pass on to note other facts in connection with the excavation of predynastic sites.

In November, 1897, M. Amélineau continued the work of excavation which he had begun in 1895, and his labours were crowned by the discovery of the tomb of a king (whom he identified with the god Osiris), to which he gave the name “Tomb of Osiris.” In his opinion the tomb dated from the time when Osiris Unnefer, the god of the Egyptian underworld and of the dead, actually reigned upon earth, and although it resembled in construction and fabric several of the tombs which stood near it, M. Amelineau saw no “antecedent improbability” in its being the veritable sepulchre of the god. The building was in the form of a house built on three sides, north, east, and south, with an inner court, and at the north-west end was a staircase, which M. Amelineau believed to be the staircase referred to in the texts which speak of the “god who is at the top of the staircase,” i.e., Osiris. The tomb contained fourteen chambers of various sizes, all of which were without doors, and this fact the discoverer accounted for by declaring that at the time when the tomb was built men had no knowledge either of windows or doors. The greater number of the chambers were empty, but some of those that were built along the sides of the tomb contained large wine jars, and although most of the jars had been broken, a few still possessed their conical mouth covers, which had, however, been burnt as hard as tiles by the fire which had been kindled in the tomb at the time of burial. These jar stoppers were all stamped with one of the names of the personage for whom the tomb had been built; this name appeared to be the “Horus name” of some king and was written thus:

On the 2nd of January, 1898, M. Amélineau found in the chamber marked D on his plan, a skull which lacked the lower jaw, and which he believed to be the head of the god Osiris ; a little later in the day the so-called “bed of Osiris” was dug out by his men. The “bed of Osiris” is a grey granite monolithic monument hewn in the shape of the lion bier, i.e., a funeral couch supported by legs made in the form of the legs of a lion, with a lion’s head at one end and a lion’s tail at the other, which is so familiar in Egyptian funeral scenes. On this “bed” is a figure of the god Osiris, who wears the white crown upon his head, and holds the usual symbols of sovereignty and dominion, i.e., a sceptre and a whip, in his hands. At the head of the god and at his feet are the remains of figures of two hawks, which, according to the legend inscribed under each, represent Horus, the avenger of his father. Above the middle of the body are the remains of another hawk, which, according to the inscription near it, represents the goddess Isis. Close by the right shoulder of Osiris is a line of inscription which reads, “Osiris Un-nefer, victorious,” that is to sav, Osiris in his character of god of the underworld, and judge of the dead. On the sides of that portion of the monument which represent the framework of the “bed” are inscriptions which, when complete, contained the name of the king who dedicated the monument for worship or veneration in the but at some period subsequent to its dedica­tion the king’s name was very carefully hammered out, and except for the general style and character of the monument there is no evidence available for helping us to assign an exact date to it. M. Amelineau first thought that the prenomen which had been chiselled out was that of Seti I., the second king of the XlXth Dynasty, but later an examination of the broken surface seems to have convinced him that the hieroglyphics which form the pre nomen of that king would require more space than the enclosing line of the cartouche contains, and that the monument was made for the king for whom the tomb was built, with which it was contemporaneous.

the Funeral Bed of Osiris

 

In April, 1898, M. Amélineau announced officially to the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres the discovery of the “Tomb of Osiris.” There is no need to follow in detail here the acrimonious dispute which arose between MM. Maspero and Amélineau concerning this announcement, and it is sufficient for our purpose to note that the former took the view that the tomb was not that of Osiris, but only a funeral chapel which had been dedicated to the god, and that Osiris was not a real king, and that Set and Horus had never been men. According to M. Maspero the tomb belonged to the same period as the tombs round about it, which contained the name of no king earlier than the period of the 1st Dynasty, and he regarded it as the product of the beginning of the 1st Dynasty or of the end of the Third Dynasty; for certain reasons which he duly set forth he thought there was greater possibility of its belonging to the IIIrd or IInd Dynasty than to the 1st Dynasty, and it appeared to him to be a royal sepulchre which was at a later period transformed into a divine tomb. That the “bed of Osiris” was contemporaneous with the tomb he and all other Egyptologists who had examined the monument held to be impossible, for the characteristics of its style proclaim that the period in which it was made was not more remote than that of the XVIIIth Dynasty; the present writer is of opinion that it belongs to a still later period. The evidence on the subject now available seems to show that the bed of Osiris is a copy of an ancient monument and that this copy was deposited in the tomb, excavated by M. Amélineau, at some period between the beginning of the XXth Dynasty and the end of the XXVIth Dynasty, by Egyptians who appear to have believed that they were restoring the funeral bed of the god in a funeral shrine or chapel, which at that time was regarded as the genuine tomb of the god Osiris. This view appears to have originated from the fact that the Egyptians, who had made the original of the copy of the “bed of Osiris,” finding in the tomb the remains of the king for whom it was made, and various objects inscribed with his name “Khent,” jumped to the conclusion, like M. Amélineau, that they had discovered the tomb of “Khent-Amenti ” i.e., the god Osiris in his capacity of “the head of the Underworld” (Amenti). The mistake once made was perpetuated by succeeding generations of Egyptians, and there is little doubt that the tomb which modern Egyptologists have proved to be the tomb of Khent, i.e., one of the oldest known kings in Egypt, was believed by large numbers of well-informed Egyptians to be none other than that of Osiris, and that as such pilgrimages were made thereto from all parts of the country. The archaic characteristics of the monument discovered by M. Amélineau, i.e., the forms of the lions’ heads, etc., are more readily explained by the hypothesis that it is a copy of an old original which was made during the rule of the kings of the Early Empire than by any other; it, moreover, gives a hint that the mistake was a very ancient one, and that it probably dates from a period anterior to the VIth Dynasty.

With the discovery of the “bed of Osiris” M. Amélineau’s excavations practically came to an end, for although the clearing of sand, etc., went on for some time after January, 1898, no results of importance were obtained, and whether for want of funds or some other reason, the excavations were suspended at Abydos, and then the site was finally abandoned by M. Amélineau and his supporters. Every one who knows how hard M. Amelineau worked, and with what devotion he carried on his investigations, will regret that his exertions were not crowned with greater success. The fact, however, remains that he was the first to discover early dynastic tombs at Abydos, and for this, if for nothing else, Egyptologists owe him a debt of gratitude.

In the winter of 1899-1900 Professor Petrie applied to the Egyptian Government for permission to make excavations at Abydos, and at length, when the “Mission Amélineau had abandoned the site, he was allowed to begin work there. His search among the royal tombs, which were said to have been already ransacked and partly cleared by M. Amélineau, was rewarded by the finding of numbers of fragments of inscribed earthenware and stone vases, plaques, stelae, etc., and it is hard to arrive at any other conclusion than that the excavations of his predecessor were carelessly, though diligently, conducted, and that he had not in his employ sufficient overseers to make the diggers do their work systematically. As mention must be made later on of the results obtained by Professor Petrie at Abydos both in 1899-1900 and 1900-1901, it is unnecessary to go into details here, and it will be sufficient to note in passing that the general accuracy of M. de Morgan’s views and statements as laid down in his works on Les Origines de l’Egypte was fully confirmed.

Among other investigators of the predynastic and early dynastic tombs of Egypt must be mentioned Messrs. Randall-Maciver and Wilkin, who made excavations at Al-‘Amrah at the end of the year 1900, in two cemeteries which lie between two wide valleys that “run down from the upper desert a short distance north, of Al-Amrah. One cemetery seems to have contained about six or seven hundred graves, which ranged from the very earliest New Race times through the entire middle period down to the beginning of the Late Prehistoric”; this cemetery was in the south-west corner of the tract of land between the valleys. The other cemetery contained “burials of almost, if not quite, the earliest type,” which continue “down to the Ist or IInd Dynasty.”

In 1901 Mr. J. Garstang was fortunate enough to find the tombs of two kings of the IIIrd Dynasty, i.e., Tcheser and Hennekht at Bet Khallaf, near Girgah.

The reader has now before him a tolerably complete statement of the work which has been done in connection with the excavation of predynastic and early dynastic graves in Egypt by Europeans between the years 1894 and 1901. Of the work which has been carried out by natives for the administration of the Gizeh Museum nothing definite can be said, except that it was considerable. It is greatly to be regretted that so much of the native work has been unsystematic, but there is no doubt that the Egyptian has rescued many very fine objects, made by his remote ancestors, from oblivion or destruction, and there is equally no doubt that the amount and extent of the destruction of ancient remains which he is alleged to have perpetrated in recent years have been greatly exaggerated.

Notwithstanding all that has been said about “scientific” excavations, the native digger deserves some credit, for with very few exceptions the excavations which have been successful owe their success largely to the information about ancient sites which he has supplied.

Sufficient has been said above to indicate to the reader the class of objects which the remarkable graves already briefly described have yielded, and it now remains to show how the evidence which they afford has been interpreted, and what deductions we are justified in drawing from it.

The first investigator to publish a connected series of conclusions based upon an examination of the antiquities at first hand was Professor Petrie, who, in his Naqada and Ballas, p. 59 ff., stated that the classes of things, i.e., flints, pottery, etc., which had been drifting into the hands of collectors and into great national collections for several years before he began to dig at Nakada, belonged “to a large population spread over the whole of Upper Egypt”; and that a complete break existed “between the Egyptian civilization and that of the New Race.” By the words “New Race” he designated the people or “certain invaders of Egypt by whom the flints, pottery, stone jars, vases, etc., had been made, and he decided that the New Race possessed an entirely different culture to that of the Egyptians, and had no apparent connection with them.” Because burials were found which intruded into the Egyptian tombs of the Early Empire, and because a burial of the XIIth Dynasty was superposed on burials of the “New Race,” and because brick tombs were built during the period of the XIIth Dynasty through the ruins of a town of the “New Race,” he concluded that the “New Race” lived in Egypt after the period of the IVth Dynasty, and before that of the XIIth Dynasty. Because the earthenware tables, bowls, etc., which are found in the later style of the “New Race ” tombs appear to be copied from the well-known forms of the Early Empire—the adoption of forms being due to imitation and not to learning from ancient Egyptians, all the copies being made by hand, and not on the wheel like the originals—the “New Race” entered Egypt between the Early and Middle Empires. The period in Egyptian history available for such an intrusion is after the Vth Dynasty and before the rise of the Xlth Dynasty, i.e., between b.c. 3322 and BC. 3000, and “from the total “absence of any known Egyptian objects belonging to this age in Upper Egypt, it seems not improbable that the dominion of the invaders covered these three centuries, and we may approximately date their remains between 3300 and 3000 b.c.” Because Egyptian objects are absent, even in the later period of the history of the “New Race,” and the use of the potter’s wheel is disregarded, the relations of these “invaders” with the Egyptians appear to have been completely hostile, and there was no trade between them, and we “must accept the expulsion of the Egyptians as having “been practically complete from the Thebaid.” That the “New Race” was a tribe, “and not merely men employed by Egyptians, is also shown by the preponderance of women, who have exactly the same physical characteristics as the men. Everything, therefore, contradicts the association of the Egyptians and the New Race; and the absolute exclusion of their remains, one from the other, in both tombs and towns, makes it impossible to regard them as dwelling in the country together. We therefore conclude that the invaders destroyed or expelled the whole Egyptian population, and occupied the Thebaid alone.” That the “New Race” were a “sturdy hill people” is proved by the “massive legs and tall stature often found.” They were neither fighters nor quarrelsome, as only about one in 300 shows [sic] bones broken at any period of life, and not a single skull injured before death has been observed”; they were great hunters, they were acquainted with the metals gold, silver, and copper, they were right-handed, they could spin and weave, they were masters in the art of working in stone and in the production of vases and vessels of beautiful shape and form; they had simple marks, which were probably personal signs, but never combined them to form ideas; they had fixed beliefs about the future and the needs of the dead, as the order of the grave furniture is very constant, and the position of the body almost invariable. They had a great burning at their funerals, though the body was never burnt. But the bodies were often cut up, more or less, and in some cases certainly treated as if they were partly eaten.” The “New Race” was connected by Professor Petrie with the Libyans because its pottery resembles in shape, and form, and decoration, and material that of the Kabyles, who are the modern representatives of the Libyans, and because the hunting habits of the New Race resemble those of the Kabyles, and the tattoo patterns of the New Race resemble those of the Libyans in the tomb of Seti I., about b.c. 1370. He thought that the Egyptians were largely formed from Libyan immigrants to begin with; the basis of the race apparently being a mulatto of Libyan-negro mixture, judging from the earliest skeletons at Medum. Finally he concluded that in the New Race we see a branch of the same Libyan race that founded the Amorite power; that we have in their remains the example of the civilization of the southern Mediterranean at the beginning of the use of metal, about 3200 b.c. And that probably in the galleys painted on the pottery we see the earliest pictures of that commerce of the Punic race, which was so important for some three thousand years later on that sea. In short, we have revealed a section of the Mediterranean civilization, preserved and dated “for us by the soil of Egypt.”

Certain of the conclusions which were arrived at by Professor Petrie were generally accepted by both anthropologists and Egyptologists, but these were of the class which were self-evident; of the remainder many were diametrically opposed to those arrived by other investigators at first hand, and many were combated with vigour on all sides. On the one hand M. Amélineau claimed that the objects which he had found at Abydos, and which resembled those found by Professor Petrie at Tukh, dated from the time of the “divine” kings of Egypt, and on the other, Professor Petrie declared that they were not older than the period which lies between b.c. 3300 and b.c. 3000; and the “bed of Osiris,” to which the former excavator attributed such a great antiquity, was thought by M. Maspero to be a work not older at most than the XVIIIth Dynasty.

At this period of doubt and uncertainty great light was thrown upon the predynastic ethnography of Egypt and the origin of Egyptian civilization by M. J. de Morgan, whose training as a scientific geologist and mining engineer qualified him to decide many questions on these subjects which were quite outside the competence of Egyptologists, and whose extensive excavations at Nakada enabled him to speak on the subjects under discussion with peculiar authority. In the year 1898 he published the second volume of his work Recherches sur les Origines de l’Egypte, wherein he described the results of his labours in the field of predynastic research, and set forth the conclusions at which he had arrived; these conclusions were very different from those of Professor Petrie, and the evidence now available shows that the eminent geologist was usually correct in his assertions. Professor Petrie’s observations led him to think that the numerous population which produced the remarkable series of objects already referred to occupied the whole of Upper Egypt only, but M. de Morgan showed that their remains may be found on a continuous chain of sites which extends from Cairo in the north to Wadi Haifa in the south, with which also may be reckoned the Oases and the Fayyum; thus Professor Petrie’s “New Race” occupied the whole of the Nile Valley for nearly one thousand miles instead of a comparatively small portion of it in Upper Egypt. From the list of characteristics of the Egyptians and of the “New Race” which Professor Petrie drew up for purposes of comparison, it was clear that the latter were at a lower stage in the scale of civilization than the former, and that the manners, and customs, and industries, and abilities of the two peoples were entirely different, and that their physical characteristics were entirely distinct. Moreover, the objects found in the graves of the “New Race” showed not the slightest trace of Egyptian influence, and the graves contained no objects which had been made by Egyptians; but there existed considerable evidence to show that the historical Egyptians had borrowed largely from the industries of the “New Race.”

The net result of all this proved that the Egyptians and the “New Race” did not live side by side, and that they did not occupy the country at the same time; for had there been communication between them, the more civilized race would have transmitted to the less civilized a great number of its manners and customs, and the results of its industrial arts, and the use of Egyptian objects would have been adopted by the race with inferior civilization. This being so, one of the two peoples must have preceded the other in the country of Egypt, and the first occupant could be none other than Professor Petrie’s “New Race,” because, in spite of its less advanced degree of civilization, it had borrowed nothing from the more advanced Egyptians. The “New Race” were, then, the aborigines, or perhaps, more correctly, the inhabitants of Egypt, whom the Egyptians found there when they entered or invaded the country, and they could be nothing else.

Having thus proved the great antiquity of the “New Race,” M. de Morgan went on to show that the period assigned by Professor Petrie for their existence in Egypt was an impossible one, for at the end of the Early Empire Egypt was highly civilized, and its armies had advanced far into Western Asia and the Eastern Sudan, and its kings were ruling over large tracts of country; how, then, could a semi-barbarous people like those which formed the “New Race,” who were armed with flint weapons only, invade Egypt, and expel or massacre the whole of the population of the country without leaving any trace of it behind?

The correct chronological position having been assigned by M. de Morgan to the “New Race,” it remained to consider whence they came and where their original home was situated. Professor Petrie had come to the definite conclusion that the New Race were Libyans and also kinsmen of the Amorites of Syria, and that their remains were examples of the southern Mediterranean civilization of about b.c. 3200 ; but it is only possible to speak of the New Race as being Libyans in the sense that they were the north­east African substratum of the later race of historic Egyptians. Of the Libyans of predynastic times we know nothing, and, as M. de Morgan has shown that the “New Race” were the aborigines of Egypt, or at least the people whom the Egyptians found in Egypt when they entered the country, it is futile to declare a relationship between the “New Race”, say, b.c. 5000, and the Amorites, for whom the character of pre-Semitic aborigines of Palestine is claimed, so far as we know, on insufficient evidence. A similarity between early Palestinian and “New Race” pottery does not necessarily imply any racial connection between Libyans and Amorites, and, since Professor Petrie’s date for the “New Race ” was wrong by at least 2000 years, by his words,“ civilization of the southern Mediterranean,” we can only understand an early civilization which was Egyptian, for there is as yet no proof that the primitive culture of Palestine and of the Aegean dates from a period which is as remote as b.c. 5000. On the other hand, M. de Morgan declares that he is greatly troubled to find for the peoples who dwelt in the valley of the Nile before the Egyptians a name which will exactly express his thoughts on the subject; he cannot describe them as aborigines, or autochthones, for they were not born in the country, and they probably came from other countries, and either drove out or subjugated the men who lived in the country before them, and whom they found on their arrival there. Further, he is unable to employ the term “Libyans,” for that would imply a special origin, and besides we have, he thinks, no reason for placing the hearth of this human race in one country any more than in another. Though not strictly exact, he decided to use the expression “indigenes” for describing the “ New Race,” and this he uses throughout his book in its relative and not absolute sense, for we know nothing whatever about the origin of this people or of those who preceded them in the Valley of the Nile.

The question of the racial connection between the Egyptians and the Libyans has been discussed from a craniological point of view by Mr. Randall-Maciver, who has arrived at the following conclusion:—“The result of this whole investigation has been to show that Libya and early Egypt were not united by any ties of race, but that they were in sufficiently close contact with one another or with some common centre to have developed a culture which was in some important respects identical. While, however, too little is known of the early civilization of the Berbers to permit of stating whether it exhibited any characteristics alien to Egypt, it is certain that the prehistoric Egyptians were acquainted with developments of art of which no trace is to be found in Libya. ... A natural prejudice inclines the archaeologist to suppose that it was the Egyptian who possessed the superior skill, and who supplied their products to their less civilized neighbours without deriving much from the latter in return; but, after all, there is not sufficient evidence to justify any confident assertion upon the point.” In his more recent work, Earliest Inhabitants of Abydos, Mr. Randall-Maciver reasserts these views.

Professor Wiedemann thinks that the civilization which is illustrated by the objects from Nakada was in some way related to that of the western neighbours of Egypt, and that this is more evident if we consider the “incontrovertible connection” between the civilization of Nakada and that which one calls the “island civilization” of Greece, which preceded the Mycenaean period in the country of the northern Mediterranean. But with the evidence at present before us it is difficult to accept as definite or final any statement which asserts an absolute connection between the predynastic cultures of Egypt and Greece, for the very simple fact that we have at present no reason for elating even the most primitive antiquities from Greece before b.c. 2500, whereas in respect of the predynastic antiquities of Egypt almost the latest possible date that can be assigned to them is b.c. 5000. And in this connection it is important to note that Mr. Arthur Evans’ recent discoveries point to the fact that the most primitive culture of Greece, i.e., the culture illustrated by the “Island Graves,” was more or less contemporaneous with the period of the Xllth Dynasty. And if this be so, it follows that the fragments of painted Pre-Mycenaean pottery which were found in the tombs of Telia, Ten, and Semerkhat, Kings of the 1st Egyptian Dynasty, cannot belong to the period of these kings, but must have been introduced into their tombs at some subsequent period. Relying on his view described above, Professor Wiedemann is of opinion that the autochthones of Egypt were related to the Libyans that they were conquered and reduced to a state of slavery by another people, and that at the beginning of the Early Empire they formed the inferior class in the Valley of the Nile.

The views of the eminent anthropologist and craniologist, Professor Sergi, on the subject, though neither convincing nor satisfactory, must here be noted, for in his Mediterranean Race, he says:— “I cannot here reproduce all the reasons brought forward by de Morgan against the opinion of Petrie, but they seem to me for the most part just, and I accept his conclusions that we are here concerned with a primitive population, not one that arrived at a late epoch of the old Egyptian empire ; as also I accept his opinion that we find here a civilisation anterior to that of the Pharaohs in its definite and well known forms. But I cannot follow de Morgan when he attempts to show, even with the aid of anthropology, that the prehistoric population was different from the Egyptian, which he would bring from Asia. Many arguments against his opinions maybe found in his own discoveries at Naqada and elsewhere, and in the physical characters of the skulls described by Fouquet, as well as by Petrie. First of all we may note the method of burial adopted in the necropolis of Naqada and elsewhere, so well investigated by Wiedemann, who, though desiring to show the Asiatic origin of the Egyptians, really furnishes arguments favourable to the opposite opinion of an African origin. Excavation in a necropolis of the Naqada type shows that the men of that period had three methods of burial: Either the grave received the disseminated and incomplete bones, or the skeleton was placed in a position recalling that of the foetus, or the body was burnt in a monumental tomb, as seems to have been the case with a royal tomb explored by de Morgan, though this has been doubted and even denied by others. Wiedemann, however, accepts this conclusion, and also agrees that these three usages are unlike the classical customs of the Egyptians, but he believes it may be shown that they are intimately united with the Egyptian religion and with the worship of Osiris and Horus, as learnt from the Book of the Dead and the ritual formulae of the Egyptians. “Referring to dismemberment, Wiedemann states that the vestiges of this very ancient custom have never completely disappeared, and are preserved not only in the texts but also in actual practices. Up to a very late period the lower part of the foot of the mummy was dislocated, and in other cases the phallus of the corpse was cut off in order to be embalmed separately and buried near the mummy. This explains, in his opinion, the dismemberment and disorder of the bodies in the graves discovered by Petrie, and hence a custom which was symbolically preserved down to the latest epoch of Egyptian history. As regards the absence of portions of the body, explained by Petrie as due to a special kind of anthropophagy, with the object of inheriting the virtues of the dead, Wiedemann gives no satisfactory explanation, but cannot accept anthropophagy. This transformation of burial customs has convinced me that there has been a real evolution up to the definite form of embalming which then remained constant. Of this  Fouquet, in his craniological examination, found evident traces in the skulls of Beit Allam, of Guebel-Silsileh, and other places. There exists, he states, in the skulls of the rude stone epoch in Egypt, deposits of bitumen mixed with cerebral substance, and this bitumen could not have been introduced by the nasal passages, the brain not having been removed, but only by the occipital foramen, after the head had been cut off; and Petrie repeatedly states that the head was generally cut off in the graves he explored. De Morgan is compelled to admit that the burial customs of the early Egyptians were not yet fixed. If this was so, it cannot be affirmed that the historical Egyptians were not the descendants of those who left their graves at Abydos, Naqada, and Ballas, that is to say, the graves of neolithic civilisation. Besides, the royal tomb at Naqada, regarded as the tombof Menes, the founder of the 1st Dynasty, clearly shows a transition between neolithic civilisation and a new civilisation slowly acquiring its definite characters.”

Professor Sergi devotes several pages to a discussion of the evidence derived from craniology concerning the “New Race,” which he concludes thus:—“Not only in this comparison of prehistoric skulls with those of the dynasties do we find that both show the same forms and therefore belong to the same stock, but also by an examination of the royal mummies of Deir-el-Bahari, which, as I have found, yield ellipsoidal and pentagonal forms as well as one beloid. On these grounds the conviction has grown in my mind that there is no difference of race between the historical Egyptians and the men who preceded them, the so-called Proto-Egyptians of Evans, and Morgan’s ‘old race. Both alike belong to the Mediterranean stock, and are of African origin.” The above remarks, coming as they do from an expert craniologist, are extremely interesting, but they leave an uneasy suspicion in the mind that the craniological measurements of predynastic skulls cannot be regarded as possessing any very definite or absolute authority in the settlement of the question under consideration, and that the archaeologist must expect but little help from data which are capable of being interpreted in several ways.

The view enunciated by Professor Wiedemann resembles closely that of M. Maspero, who many years ago held the opinion that the root-stock of the Egyptians was African, and in his latest pronouncement on the subject he says that the bulk of the Egyptian population presents the characteristics of the white races which one finds settled from all antiquity in the parts of the Libyan continent which are on the shores of the Mediterranean, that it originated in Africa itself, and that it made its way into Egypt from the west or from the south-west. He further suggests that when this people arrived in Egypt they may have found there a black race, which they either destroyed or drove out, and that they were subsequently added to in number by Asiatics who were introduced either through the Isthmus of Suez or through the marshes of the Delta. The views of Professors Maspero and Wiedemann seem to be the deductions which we cannot help making from the facts before us, and as they are propounded by men who are both archaeologists and Egyptologists they merit serious consideration by all who are interested in the matter. We must, however, note in passing that there is no reason for assuming the existence of a black, or negro population, who preceded the “New Race” in the occupation of the country, and that the importance of the Asiatic element in the historical Egyptian has been understated.

We are now face to face with the difficult question, “Where did the conquerors of the ‘New Race’ come from?” i.e., Where was the original home of the people who supplanted the “New Race,” and who founded the civilization of the historical Egyptians? All the evidence now available points to the fact that these conquerors came from Asia, and as arguments which can be advanced in support of this statement the following may be mentioned :—

(1)    An examination of the words found in the early Egyptian inscriptions proves that many of them are akin to the dialects of North and North-East Africa; but it is also evident that in the matter of personal pronouns, pronominal suffixes, idioms, etc., the language exhibits such remarkable similarities to the Semitic dialects, that they cannot be the result of accident. The only rational way to account for these phenomena is to assume that the language of the Semitic nations and that of the inhabitants of Egypt were descended from the same common stock, from which they had been severed at a very remote period. But it is not correct to assert that the Egyptian language is a Semitic dialect; on the contrary, it is one of the indigenous languages of North Africa which became greatly modified through Proto-Semitic influences; such influences must have emanated from Asia, and they did so at a time when the Semitic languages had not assumed the form in which they are known in the oldest literatures, and when they were, more or less, in a state of flux.

(2)    The predynastic graves, of whatever kind, contain no inscriptions, and it is clear that those who made them were unacquainted with the art of writing. M. de Morgan declares that about b.c. 4000 the only peoples in the world who could write were the Semitic and Turanian Chaldeans, who lived side by side in Mesopotamia, and the Egyptians, who lived in a country which was at some distance from the Euphrates, and that the systems of writing employed by all three peoples had a common origin, and that it is more rational to assume that the art of writing was transmitted from the Mesopotamian to the Egyptian peoples, than to think that it was discovered by each group independently, especially as the distance between them was comparatively small, and communication between them was relatively easy. Many scholars have held this view substantially for several years past, but all do not agree as to the details of the manner in which the transmission was effected. If we assume that the conquerors of the “New Race” came from a country in which the art of writing was practised, it is natural that they should bring with them a knowledge of it into Egypt; but although the fundamentals of the picture systems of writing employed in Mesopotamia and Egypt may at one time have been identical, it is quite certain that they developed on entirely different lines, and that an important factor in the different methods of development was the material employed for writing purposes in the two countries. In Mesopotamia the material most used for writing upon was clay, while in Egypt papyrus was employed; this was probably due to the fact that because of its fine texture and tenacity the clay of Mesopotamia was more suitable for tablets which had to be inscribed and baked, than the mud of Egypt. Be this as it may, the influence of the material upon the writing was soon evident, for whereas the Egyptian scribe found it was very easy to depict the curves and circular forms of natural and artificial objects on papyrus, his Babylonian brother found it to be almost impossible to do so, and he was obliged to make wedges impressed upon the soft clay to take the place of linear designs. That the knowledge of writing was probably derived from some Asiatic source seems evident, but the Egyptian written character was not a modification of the linear Babylonian script, still less of any variation of cuneiform character; it is probably more correct to assert that the Egyptian hieroglyphics and the early cuneiform characters had a common ancestor, of which no traces have survived.

(3)    The predynastic graves of the later period were found to contain numbers of small objects made of copper and bronze; the material for the former might quite well have been dug out from the mines of Sinai by the indigenous peoples of Egypt, though no evidence in support of this view exists. On the other hand, there is every probability that they obtained their knowledge of the artificial composition bronze from some nation that dwelt in or near Southern Mesopotamia, where bronze was apparently made and used fur various purposes at a very early period.

(4)    Perhaps one of the strongest arguments in favour of an Asiatic origin of the conquerors of the “New Race ” is the use, in the early ages only of Egyptian history, of the cylinder seal, which is one of the chief characteristics of the Sumerian and Babylonian civilization, and which was employed universally in Mesopotamia and the neighbouring countries from the earliest to the latest times. In Egypt the earliest cylinder seals appear not to be older than the 1st Dynasty, and the latest in the British Museum is No. 16,579, which is inscribed with the name of Amenhetep I, b.c. 1600. In connection with cylinder seals must also be mentioned the art of brick-making, and as we do not find any brick buildings in Egypt much before the period of the 1st Dynasty, whilst they were common in Mesopotamia from the earliest times, we are justified in assuming that a knowledge of brick-making was brought into the country from the East.

(5) It has been declared that whilst in general the Babylonians buried their dead in a semi-embryonic position, they were sometimes in the habit of burning them partly or wholly, but sufficient regard has not been paid to the date of the tombs in Babylonia which are here referred to. The glazed pottery which is found with such burials, and the peculiar character of the earthenware coffins and objects that accompany them, proclaim that all such burials belong to a period subsequent to that of the rule of the Persians in Mesopotamia ; we should therefore be in error if we attempted to prove a connection between the predynastic Egyptians and the Babylonians by comparing a tomb in Babylonia of, say, b.c. 250, with a tomb in Egypt of, say, B.C. 5000. Besides this, we are assuming that the conquerors of the “New Race ” were akin to the Babylonians, and it was this very people who introduced into Egypt the custom of burying the dead lying on their back at full length, a custom which eventually superseded the indigenous Egyptian practice of burying the dead in a semi-embryonic position. From the famous “Stela of the Vultures” it is clear that the early Babylonians were buried lying at full length and not in the doubled-up position which is the chief characteristic of the earliest race of Egyptians.

The facts set out in the above five paragraphs make it clear that the invaders of Egypt who conquered the “New Race” and amalgamated with them came from the East, and although it cannot be proved, as is some­times stated, that the Egyptians derived their earliest culture from Babylonia, it is certain that many of the most important elements of Egyptian culture were brought into Egypt by a people who were not remotely connected with the Babylonians. Where did this people come from? By what route did they enter Egypt? To answer these questions two theories have been propounded: according to one, the conquerors of the “New Race” entered Egypt from the north-east by way of the peninsula of Sinai and the Delta, making their way thence up the river; according to the other, which is certainly the more probable, starting from some point in Southern Arabia, they crossed over the straits of Bab al-Mandab to the African shore, which they followed northwards until they arrived at the entrance of the Wadi Hammamat at Kuser, they then entered this valley, and after a few days’ march arrived in Egypt near the ancient city of Coptos. According to both theories this people was of a Proto­Semitic origin, and as it is admitted by many eminent authorities that the cradle of the Semitic Race was in Arabia, the home of these invaders may quite well have been in the southern part of that country, and their civilization may equally well have been derived from the Sumerians of Babylonia. In favour of this latter theory the following arguments may be adduced :—

1. Tradition generally asserts that the god Horus of Behutet and his servants, or followers, who are described as mesniu or mesenti, i.e., “metal-workers,” and who are to be identified with the Shemsu Heru or “followers of Horus,” who accompany the other form of the god, i.e., Horus the son of Isis, Herusa-Ast, (Harsiesis), came from the South and not the North. By the word South we are not to understand Nubia or Central Africa, as some have contended, but the South of Egypt, or Upper Egypt, when the writer is considering the matter from the standpoint of Lower Egypt. Now in the whole legend of Horus and his mesniu we no doubt have a tradition of the invasion of Egypt from the South by the conquerors of the “New Race,” who succeeded in overthrowing the indigenous peoples chiefly by their weapons of metal. The hieroglyphic inscriptions which record this legend under different forms mention the neighbourhood of Denderah as the place where the principal battle between Horus and his mesniu and the indigenous people took place, a record of the incident being preserved in the name of the place which the Egyptians called “Khata-neter”, i.e., the “ god’s slaughter.” Now, according to the second theory the invaders made their way to Kuser, and if they entered Egypt by the Wadi Hammamat, they would strike the Nile at a point near the modern town of Lena, which is almost exactly opposite Denderah, near which, as we have said above, the battle took place. Having arrived at this point the conquerors occupied the country to the south as well as to the north, but they seem to have met with considerable opposition near Thebes, and not to have advanced much further than the modern town of Edfu, where their leader founded a settlement, which continued to the latest times, and formed the principal seat of the worship of Horus of Behutet. This is the legend of the fight between Horus and Set, i.e., the struggle of the invading leader and his followers against the so- called “New Race.”

2.      Another legend makes the goddess Hathor (i e., Het-Heru, “House of Horus”), the principal seat of whose worship was at Denderah, come from Ta-neter, the “divine land,” or “land of the god ”; in late times this name is often applied in the texts to Egypt, but in the earliest times it always refers to a country to the south of Egypt, which may well be identified with Somaliland and Abyssinia, or even the country further to the north, i.e., the modern Erythrea.

3.      The Egyptians themselves always seem to have had some idea that they were connected with the people of the land of Punt, a country which is probably identical with the Ta-neter, or the “ divine land” mentioned above, and M. Naville thinks that there may have been among the Egyptians a “vague and ancient tradition that they originally came from the land of Punt, and that it had been their home before they invaded and conquered the lower valley of the Nile.” As the name Punt is always written in the texts without, the determinative of a foreign country, it seemed as if they regarded the people of that place as being racially connected with themselves; and we are probably justified in regarding the inhabitants of Punt as a section of the invading hosts from Arabia which was left behind by the greater portion of the conquerors on their way from the Bab al-Mandab to Kuser. Whether this be so or not, it is quite obvious from the representations of the people of Punt which occur on the monuments that the racial connection between the two peoples must have been exceedingly close; and we may note in passing that the plaited, turned-up beard which is a characteristic of the Egyptian gods is found to have been worn by the inhabitants of Punt in the time of Queen Hatshepset; and also by the Egyptians of the 1st Dynasty, though never at a later date. It is sometimes stated that the conquering race, having passed through Punt to Egypt, made its way onwards into Palestine, and that the Philistines (of the Bible) are probably a branch of this race; such a statement, however, ignores all the arguments in favour of a Western or European origin for the Philistines. To suggest still further that the name of the people of Punt is in any way connected with that of the Poeni or Phoenicians, who in later times founded the Punic colony of Carthage, is to betray an ignorance of the following facts :—

1. That the Phoenicians were pure Semites, who spoke a language which was almost identical with Hebrew;

2. That there is no evidence that they called themselves by any name which in any way resembled Pun or Punt or the Greek Phoinix;

3. That the Latin adjective purlieus is derived from the noun Poenus, which is the Latin equivalent of the word Phoinix, between which and the word Punt there is no resemblance or connection whatsoever.

It may now be mentioned that the theory, which would make the conquerers of the New Race enter Egypt by the Wadi Hammamat, receives a remarkable confirmation in the fact that the earliest tombs and monuments of the dynastic Egyptians are found in the neighbourhood of Coptos, where the Wadi Hammamat opens into the Nile Valley, i.e., at Abydos and Nakada, and that Manetlio states that the first two dynasties of kings were of Thinite origin. We have briefly described the excavations which have been made in the predynastic cemeteries of Egypt by Europeans and others, and have mentioned the principal deductions, which may fairly be made from the facts which have come to light through the labours of the excavators, concerning the original homes and origin of those who were buried in them; and we may now, in a few paragraphs, summarize the information derived from an examination of the objects which were found in them, and so endeavour to give the reader an idea of the physical characteristics and customs of the men who at such a remote period, by their skill and knowledge, obtained a position of pre-eminence among their fellows.

The predynastic Egyptians, that is to say, that stratum of them which was indigenous to North Africa, belonged to a white or light-skinned race with fair hair, who in many particulars resembled the Libyans, who in later historical times lived very near the western bank of the Nile. They were dolichocephalic, or “long-headed,” i.e., the diameter of their skulls from side to side, or the transverse diameter, bore a less proportion to the longitudinal diameter, i.e., that from front to back, than 8 to 10; hence they were, both physically and mentally, entirely different from the Egyptians, whose skulls, in respect of measurements, occupy a middle position between the dolichocephalic and the brachycephalic, or “short-headed” men. The hair of both sexes was short, and the beards of the men were long and pointed, but turned up at the points; the faces of both men and women were regular and oval in shape, and the lips projected but slightly. The eyes of the women were almond shaped and very broad, and they were shaded with heavy, arched eye­brows; the figures of the women were comparatively slim, their thighs were broad, and their feet of moderate size, with, in some cases, a good instep. Both men and women seem to have had slightly sloping shoulders, and to have been a little above the average height, and not of a heavy type in their build. They seem to have tattooed their bodies with figures of animals and with wavy lines, etc., but the direct evidence for this assumption is not very strong. It is well known that nearly all semi-savage or barbarous peoples adorn their bodies either with painted scenes or with tattooed designs, and there is no good reason for believing that the predynastic Egyptians formed any exception to the general rule. The dynastic Egyptians do not seem to have adopted tattooing on any considerable scale, although, according to the examples quoted by Professor Wiedemann, they resorted to it occasionally, but M. de Morgan thinks that the pieces of red and yellow ochre, which are found so frequently in the tombs of the predynastic Egyptians, formed the colour­ing matter which they used in tattooing, and if this be so the custom must have been widespread. It is probable that in the daytime most of the predynastic Egyptians wore no clothing of any kind, but the members of the ruling houses or families seem to have worn the undressed skins of animals, such as goats or gazelles, made into drawers which they fastened round the waist with a rope or cord tied into a knot; in any case there is no evidence that they wore long, loose, flowing garments. It seems that when skins of animals were worn it was the custom to allow the tail of the animal to hang down behind the man’s back ; this is a characteristic of men’s dress in the early dynastic times, and survives as an important feature of the festal costume of kings and gods down to the latest period. The principal garment of the women seems to have been a skirt, not very loose, which reached almost to the ankles, and the upper part of the body and the arms remained without covering. In the accompanying illustration are reproduced a few predynastic ivory figures of women from the British Museum collection, which will give the reader an idea of the general appearance of women during the predynastic period. Nos. 1, 2, and 3 illustrate the earliest types, and Nos. 4, 5, and 6 a later type, which shows the treatment of the hair when allowed to grow long; No. 5 has eyes inlaid with lapis-lazuli, by which we are probably intended to understand that the woman here represented had blue eyes. No. 7 belongs probably to a much later date, for, judging by the fringed or pleated work round the neck of the garment which the woman wears, at the period when she lived the people must have been able to weave linen of some fineness; another proof of the later date of the figure is the manner in which the hair is gathered up into a mass, and held in position by a fillet which runs round the back of the head. According to M. de Morgan, the art of weaving was unknown to the earliest predynastic Egyptians, and he bases this view upon the fact that he found no woven stuffs in any of. the graves except such as contained metal objects; in this case No. 7 must belong either to the period of the 1st Dynasty or that which immediately preceded it.

Bone or ivory figures of early Dynastic Period (?)

 

Predynastic women wore neck­laces of beads made of carnelian, agate, flint, and other hard stones, and of limestone, and shells; bracelets made of ivory, limestone, flint, and mother-of-pearl have also been found in their graves. The flint bracelets prove that the makers must have possessed a marvellous facility in the working of flint, which could only have been acquired as the result of flint-working for generations, and we may well believe that the production of a flint bracelet marked the highest point of the art. Flint bracelets are rare in dynastic times, and it seems as if Egyptian women then no longer wore them. A number of bone combs with short teeth have been found in predynastic graves, but they can hardly have been used except for purposes of ornament, if they were known in the early period, for women as well as men wore their hair short; some combs are surmounted by figures of birds, but these must belong to the period which immediately preceded dynastic times. Side by side with these must be mentioned the large numbers of bone and ivory objects to which the name pendants has been given ; they are often curved and in shape generally resemble the claw of an animal. Some of them are pierced at the broad end, and some of them have notches cut there, and all of them are ornamented with horizontal, diagonal, or zigzag lines; it seems as if such objects must have been worn as ornaments, or have served some purpose of the toilet. In the same class M. de Morgan groups the long, hollow ivory sticks which are made in the form of rude figures of men; the larger end is usually closed by means of a stopper made of some resinous substance, and the hollow beneath is found to be filled with coloured substance, such as sulphur of antimony, etc.

Thus we have seen that the earliest predynastic men and women in Egypt dressed themselves in skins, and that their descendants, certainly the female portion of them at least, made themselves garments out of woven fabrics, and that the ornaments worn by the women consisted of necklaces of beads made of stones, etc., of bracelets made of flint, etc., and of combs, pendants, and plaques made of bone and ivory. The ivory sticks referred to above as being filled with some coloured substance we may look upon as prototypes of the IM or stibium tubes of the dynastic period, and the presence of sulphur of antimony, to which Dr. de Morgan refers, adds confirmation to the suggestion.

The dwellings of the predynastic Egyptians were small huts formed of branches of trees or reeds, tied together with twigs, and probably much resembled the huts, with walls formed of reeds tied together and roofs made of the dried leaves of palms called “salatik,” which are in common use among the better classes of the Sudan at the present day; in the summer time they did, no doubt, as the modern Egyptian does when he is pasturing his flocks in Upper Egypt, i.e., simply sheltered themselves behind a mat of reeds through which the wind could easily make its way. Of the position of such dwellings nothing can be said, for all traces of the habitations of the predynastic Egyptians in the actual valley are buried under some forty feet of Nile mud. Buildings or houses made of crude brick usually contain the remains of metal objects, a fact which is sufficient to prove that the art of brick-making is one of the characteristics of the conquerors of the “New Race,” i.e., of the invaders from the East. Whether the indigenous population was dense or only very large cannot at present be said, but, judging from the remains of the predynastic settlements which M. de Morgan identified on the edge of the desert on both banks of the Nile, the occupants of the country must have been tolerably numerous.

From the fact that the predynastic Egyptians buried their dead in skins of animals, and that they also wore drawers made of skins, we are justified in assuming that they spent much of their time in hunting in the forests, which in the period of their earliest occupation of the Nile Valley covered the banks of the river. The numerous ivory objects which have been found in their graves seem to indicate that the elephant must have been one of the wild animals which they hunted, but it is pretty certain that long before the arrival of the dynastic Egyptians that mighty beast had retreated from the country and made his home further to the south. The name “Abu,” i.e., “elephant,” which is given to the Island of Elephantine in the hieroglyphic inscriptions, is probably due to the fact that some one in very early days thought that the shape of the island resembled that of an elephant, just as some centuries ago the Arabs, thinking that the piece of land on which the great city was built at the point where the Blue Nile flows into the White Nile resembled the trunk of an elephant, called the city itself “ Khartum,” i.e., “ elephant’s trunk.” The chief point of interest in the old name of Elephantine Island is that the early Egyptians who gave it the name “Abu” must have known what an elephant was like, and that they were familiar with the form of the animal. But although the elephant was not found in Egypt in early dynastic times, we are certain that the hippopotamus was, and that he was often hunted either in or near Egypt is clear from the fact that the tombs of great men often contain pictures showing the pursuit and attack of the beast by the deceased; the wild bull, the wild boar, and all the various kinds of animals of the gazelle and antelope species, the lion, leopards of various kinds, the hyaena, the wolf, the jackal, the crocodile, etc., were frequently hunted. The principal homes of such wild animals must have been the swamps and marshes which existed in many parts of the Nile Valley and in the Delta, and it was in these that the predynastic and dynastic Egyptians sought their prey; the formation of such can be well explained by what takes place to this day in the rivers to the south of Egypt. As long as the rivers are in flood their irregular channels are filled to overflowing, but as soon as the rains in Central Africa cease the rivers fall rapidly, and before long dry patches and sand-banks appear in their beds. As the supply of water further diminishes, such patches grow wider and longer, and eventually the river becomes nothing but a series of lakes and marshes or swamps, separated from each other by long reaches of sand; want of water compels the animals and reptiles to congregate in and about such lakes and swamps, and travellers who have seen such in the remote parts of the Atbara and of the Blue and White Niles describe the scenes as something extraordinary. Here may be seen elephants, hippopotami, lions, hyaenas, panthers, crocodiles, turtles, etc., all living together in a peace which is forced upon them by their common enemy—thirst. What is true of the Atbara and other rivers of the kind in our own days was true for the Nile in predynastic and dynastic times, and for long after the conquerors of the “ New Race ” had made their way into Egypt the lords of the land would be able to indulge their fancy for hunting “big game.” To attempt to enumerate the birds of predynastic Egypt is hopeless, for the varieties must have been exceedingly numerous; the forms of a large number of species have been preserved by the hieroglyphic characters of the dynastic Egyptians, but these probably only represent the varieties which, either by their habits or through the ideas which were associated with them in early times, appealed in a special manner to the early masters of picture writing. Moreover, it is more than probable that by the time the dynastic Egyptians had developed their system of writing, several of the species of birds of predynastic Egypt had ceased to exist. The ostrich seems to have been esteemed in a most unusual manner, for remains of its eggs and bones are often found in predynastic graves; the few perfect specimens which have been discovered are usually pierced at the ends and covered with designs of various kinds. It is interesting to note that ostriches’ eggs are used in the ornamentation of churches and mosques in many parts of Egypt and in the countries lying further east, to this day, and a certain amount of sanctity is generally attached to them; they are pierced and suspended by cords attached to the roofs in prominent parts of these edifices. In some churches they are hung before the altar, and the present writer has seen many which have been painted and decorated before they were so hung. Neither Christian nor Muhammadan had any good reason to give for having such things in their churches and mosques, and no one seemed to know what the eggs typified, but the preservation of the egg of the ostrich with such reverence is, no doubt, a survival of a custom which was common in prehistoric times.

 

 

We have now to consider the various kinds ot weapons with which the predynastic Egyptian armed himself when he set out to hunt wild animals, or to defend himself in war against his enemies. The commonest and simplest form of weapon, and that with which man first defended himself, was the stick or staff; when used as a weapon the stick was short, and when used as a mark of rank or dignity it was long. To make the short stick more effective it was weighted at one end with a piece of ivory or stone, which was either tied on to the stick or pierced in such a way that it might fit on to the end of the stick. Such stones, or mace-heads, as they are generally called, are usually conical in shape, and are made of several kinds of stone, the most favourite, however, being breccia, or the red and yellow “plum-pudding” stone; a mace­head attached to a stout stick about two feet long would make a very formidable club, and it is, no doubt, the knowledge of this fact which has caused this weapon to be popular all over the world. The accompanying illustrations represent the famous “mace­head” inscribed with the name of the Babylonian king Sargon I, of Agade, about B.C. 3800, and a “mace­head ” from a predynastic grave in Egypt; both are of the same shape, both are pierced in the same way, and both are made of the same kind of stone, but the former was found more than twenty years ago in Mesopotamia, and the latter was found at Abydos in Egypt a few years ago.

 

mace head of Sargon I of Agade

Mace-head of Narmer

 

Mace-heads are sometimes round in shape, and both round and conical were used all over Babylonia and Assyria from Sumerian times down to the period of the last Assyrian Empire, and, if Sumerian legend is to be trusted, the great god Marduk, when he was commissioned by the gods to wage war on their behalf against Tiamat and the brood of fiends whom she had spawned, armed himself with a mull-mullu, or club, of this kind, and the weapon helped him to slay the monster. To this day the people of Mesopotamia in their journeys through the desert carry with them clubs made of a short piece of stout stick with a head made of bitumen and clay, and its shape closely resembles that of the club which is represented on some of the Assyrian sculptures. In Egypt the club was used both by predynastic and dynastic Egyptians, and in one form or the other it is found on walls and reliefs wherever battle scenes are represented. The mace-head figured on this page is of peculiar interest. It was found in an early dynastic grave, and is made of hard limestone; it is ornamented with a representation of a serpent coiled round it, and with figures of birds, and the projections on it recall the spiked club of mediaeval times. It is probable that this object was mounted on a long stick and then carried about in processions or used for ceremonial purposes, even as some of the large mace-heads were used in Babylonia. An example of this class is figured below. Close by the perforation, on the top, is inscribed the record of the dedication of a temple to the god Ningirsu, by Enannadu, a governor of Shirpurla, or Lagash, about b.c. 4500. Round the object are sculptured in relief rude figures of an eagle, lions, etc., which are considered by some to form the ancient emblem of the city Shirpurla, the modern Tell Lo.

Mace-head inscribed with the record of the dedication of a temple to Ningirsu by Enannadu, governor of Lagash in Babylonia, B.C. 4500.

 

Archaic Maces of Ancient Egypt (PDF)

 

The next most useful object commonly employed by the predynastic Egyptians, whether for purposes of war or peace, was the axe-head, which was made either of flint or of some other hard stone, and was either polished or left rough; it was probably fastened to its handle by means of leathern thongs. Flint daggers, knives, spear­heads, arrow-heads, scrapers, etc., have been found in large numbers, and nearly every great museum contains numerous examples of the various types of these objects. In spite, however, of the excellence of their flint weapons the predynastic Egyptians must have trapped or snared the greater number of wild beasts which they killed, for none of their weapons mentioned above would be effective in the case of “ big game,” except at close quarters, and after the animal had been dragged down. With them hunting was a necessity, and it must have formed one of the chief sources of their food supply; their other great source was the Nile, which must always have contained large numbers of fine fish. The flint harpoons which have been found prove that the early indigenous peoples of Egypt knew how to spear fish with such implements, and the fishing scenes in the tombs testify to the fact that the Egyptians of dynastic times were as skilful in the gentle art as their predecessors. The greater number of the fish caught, however, were probably obtained not by spearing but by reed traps built at the sides of the river, and some were, no doubt, caught by the line and net. But there must have been a time when the predynastic Egyptian possessed neither line nor net, and when he did what the poor peasant in Mesopotamia does to this day. Having selected a place on the river­bank where the side is not too steep and the water is not too deep, he fixes a number of stout reeds on sticks upright in the river in such a manner that they form a semi-circular palisade, one end of which touches the bank, whilst the other does not quite touch it; by these means a portion of the water is enclosed. In the gap which is left between the one end of the palisade and the river-bank are placed a number of reeds slantwise with their tops pointing inwards towards the enclosure, and experience proves that when the fish have once swum over them they are unable to swim back; they are thus caught in a trap which has the merit of having water continually running through it, and is, besides, inexpensive. Great numbers of large fish are frequently caught in such traps along the swamps through which the Tigris and Euphrates flow, but in the portions of these rivers where the current runs fast traps of this kind are unprofitable, for the stream washes the reeds out of the ground. That some such method as this of catching fish must have been employed in Egypt in the earliest times is evident—for as M. de Morgan has rightly observed, the peoples on the banks of the Tigris and the Euphrates and the Nile must have developed under the same conditions, since they had the same needs, and they possessed the same natural resources, and lived under almost the same natural conditions, in countries the soil of which had been formed in almost the same manner.

In his pursuit of his calling, or in quest of food, the predynastic fisherman must have discovered at a very early period that his labours would be much lightened if he had the means of following up his prey in the marshes, and his inventive faculties were soon set to work to make a raft or boat of some kind. The materials used first of all by him were, no doubt, tree trunks and reeds, or the leaves of some kind of tree resembling the palm; he guided the tree trunk with his feet and hands in the shallows, and probably with a stick or pole in the deeper waters, but the difficulties which he must have met with in directing his trunk whenever he found himself in a current must have induced him to contrive some better and surer means of conveyance over the waters. Shallow boats made of reeds plaited or tied together were then probably invented, and as long as only sheets of water, like the lakes in the Delta, or marshes, had to be traversed they suited the purpose for which they were intended admirably. Reed boats are known to have existed in Egypt long after the conquest of the “New Race,” and the mention of the “ark of bulrushes,” in which Hebrew tradition declares Moses to have been placed, suggests that the knowledge of such boats existed down to comparatively late times, though it must be admitted that this portion of the story of the great law-giver may have descended from a very ancient period, and may have formed part of a legend of an earlier hero which the later writer introduced into his narrative. The existence of boats in the predynastic period has been for some years past considered to be proved by the paintings found on contemporaneous pottery, but one archaeologist, Mr. Cecil Torr, identifies as ostrich farms the remarkable paintings which another supposes to represent boats.

In an interesting paper published in L’Anthropologie, entitled Sur quelques prétendus Navires Egyptiens, Mr. Torr has reproduced a number of drawings of early boats from vases in the British Museum which have the great merit of being faithful copies of the objects which they represent; accuracy of representation is, as Mr. Torr says, an important consideration in the inter­pretation of the subjects. Mr. Torr goes on to point out that though we have human beings, gazelles and ostriches depicted on the vases, we never have fish; that no rowers are ever represented in the supposed boats; and from certain lines on one side of a model of a boat made of the same material as the vases, he draws conclusions which confirm him in his opinion that the long curved lines do not represent boats at all. On the contrary, he thinks the curved line represents a rampart, that the straight short lines, which are usually called oars, represent a glacis, that the gap which is seen in this row marks the path by which the rampart is approached, and that the objects which are called cabins are nothing else than little towers on each side of the rampart. In the accompanying illustrations, which are drawn from predynastic vases in the British Museum, a few varieties of such paintings are depicted, and an examination of them will show that they really are intended to represent boats, and the pictures of boats which are drawn upon papyri of a late period prove that certain of their characteristics were preserved long after their meanings had been forgotten.

 

All the boats here represented are of the same kind, and the plan of their construction proves that they were intended for river work, where it was necessary for the bow or stern of the boat to project up the bank over the shallow water there. This fact makes it impossible for such boats to have been used for sea-going purposes as suggested by Prof. Petrie. Each boat contains two small huts, which are placed amidships, and attached to one of these is a sort of mast, on the top of which is an emblem of some kind; in the front of the boat is placed what appears to be a branch or bough of a tree, and in some examples a rope for tying up is represented under the front of the boat, and steering poles are represented at the stern. The numerous lines which project from the boat vertically downwards are considered by Prof. Petrie to represent oars, and he believes such boats to be neither more nor less than rowing galleys, probably because they contain nothing which can be identified as sails; he would rather refer “these galleys to the Mediterranean than to the Nile,” and considers the pottery on which such “galleys” are represented to have been “imported into Egypt from elsewhere.” But if the vertical lines really represent oars the boats in which they were worked must have been very large indeed, in fact they would probably have been too large to float on the Nile; but whether this was so or not some other explanation of the lines must clearly be sought; for there is no evidence in support of the theory that they represent oars. M. de Morgan thinks that they depict “engins de pêche,” i.e., fishing tackle, or some unknown objects, but until we have some definite information as to the way in which such boats were built it seems idle to speculate on the matter. There remains to be considered in connection with these predynastic boats the object, which resembles a bough or branch of a tree, or a mat, in the bows of the boat, and the mast, with the symbol on the top of it, which is attached to the aft cabin. It has been thought that the bough “is placed at the stem to shade the look-out man,” but the bough or branch is more likely to be the precursor of the mat on which sat the man on the look­out. The part of the boat on which the man on the look-out sat was called nefru, and thisis the name which is given to the look-out place in the boat of the Sun-god Ra; in the Papyrus of Ani, plate 19, the god Harpocrates is seen sitting on the mat which is stretched over the look-out place in the bark of Ra as it sails over the sky, and sometimes the place where the god usually sits is occupied by a bird. The object, however, of the bough or mat seems to have been to supply to all beholders information concerning the tribe and family of the occupant of the boat. The short mast which was attached to the aft cabin was probably used for displaying a flag or symbol which either referred to the country or city of the master of the boat, or declared his rank; the following examples of such symbols or flags are reproduced from the work of M. de Morgan, who has borrowed most of them from the drawings of boats given in Naqada and Ballas. Thus we have the standard of the man from the region of two, three, four, or five hills (Nos. 1-4); and the standard of the men who adopted horns (No. 5), and two arrows as their emblems (Nos. 6, 7), and the standard of the fish (No. 8), but most interesting of all is the flag or symbol of the man who adopted as his emblem the elephant (No. 9)!

It is more than probable that these and other symbols which were affixed to the short masts in boats subsequently became the em­blems of the nomes in Upper and Lower Egypt, and the nome-standards, which are so often seen depicted in the great temples of the historical Egyptians, appear to be little else than direct copies; in any case the symbols are of indigenous or North African origin, and each must be the emblem of an important division of the country, which represented the territory of a great tribe, and which under the conquerors from the East became a nome, though in historic times the personal element was eliminated from it. But as the predynastic Egyptian found a tree trunk propelled by his own hands and feet an unsatisfactory means of crossing or travelling up and down the river, so he must also have found that boats made of reeds and rushes were both unsuitable and dangerous for the purpose of fishing or fowling in the thickets of marshes, which were crowded with crocodiles, or other huge amphibious beasts, and as a result he must have set to work to build stronger craft. It cannot be said at present how far he advanced in the art of boat building, or whether he ever succeeded in building a boat which a crocodile could not crush with his jaws, or which a hippopotamus could not easily reduce to splinters; but the probability is that his boats were always more or less fragile, and that they were most frequently of very light draught, and that they had no decks of any sort or kind. The natural assumption is that in going up stream their motive power was the wind, but in none of the examples of painted predynastic pottery which have been published has the representation of any sail been discovered. Early in 1901, however, the Trustees of the British Museum purchased a large predynastic jar on which is an excellent representation of a boat, the shape of which is familiar to us from pictures of boats which were drawn in dynastic times. At one end of it is set a mast, whereon is a large rectangular sail, and close by the mast is a seat; at the same end of the boat is what appears to be a steering oar. At the other end is a kind of cabin with a slanting roof, but the stern of the boat in the painting is damaged, and the details of it cannot be clearly made out. Round and about the boat are masses of wavy lines which are clearly conventional pictures of water; the other paintings on the vase depict a large bird in the act of pecking at a wriggling worm, and four scorpions on a line which seems to be intended to represent the ground. The vase is large and well made, and in respect of material, colour, etc., closely resembles other earthenware vessels of its class and period.

 

We have seen that the predynastic Egyptians must have been great hunters, and it is clear from what has been said above that water-fowl and fish must have formed a considerable portion of their food supply, but we have also to consider whether they raised crops of cereals, and whether they had succeeded in domesticating animals which would provide them with meat when game was scarce. M. de Morgan was first of all of opinion that they were agriculturists, and he based his opinion upon the fact that he had found in his excavations of predynastic sites a number of saw-like flints which he thought had been fastened in sickles, but subsequently he noticed that he had never found objects of the kind on any of the sites which contained nothing but remains of the predynastic period, and he therefore doubted the correctness of the opinion which he had formed, and which he had published in his work, L'Age de la Pierre et les Métaux, in 1896. Subsequently the eminent botanist, Professor Schweinfurth, pointed out to him that wheat and barley were in their natural home in Mesopotamia, where they actually grew wild, and the obvious deduction to be made from this was that if wheat and barley existed in Egypt in predynastic times they must have been brought there from that country by the conquerors of the indigenous peoples. To decide the question M. de Morgan made further very careful researches with the view of ascertaining whether wheat. and the remains of agricultural tools were ever found together in the same grave, and he found that they were not; until further trustworthy excavations prove to the contrary, we must therefore assume that the cultivation of wheat and barley was introduced into Egypt by the early invaders of the country, and if this be so, the fact forms another proof in favour of the Asiatic origin of the new comers. In most countries, certainly in those which have a winter season, the absence of cereals would make it impossible to keep flocks and herds, but this was not necessarily the case in Egypt, where they have no winter in the western sense of the word; the only period of the year when the predynastic Egyptian would And any difficulty in feeding his domestic animals would be at the time of the inundation, but then he would, as his modern representative does today, fall back upon the branches of trees for food for his cattle.

 It has been often stated that the greater number of the domestic animals which are depicted upon the tombs of the IVth and Vth Dynasties are of Asiatic origin; this may be so, but it is probable that there is a strong strain of the indigenous cattle in them, for it has yet to be proved that the offspring of foreign cattle either did or will thrive and increase in Egypt, except they be crossed with native breeds. But it is a suggestive fact, however, when viewed in connection with the Asiatic origin of cattle in ancient Egypt, that the god Osiris is called the “Bull of Amentet,” and that the cow-goddess Hathor was brought into Egypt by the invaders; these facts show that to the men who wrote at least some of the chapters of the Book of the Bead the bull was the strongest and best animal known to them, and the one best suited to be the type of their god. The antelope, and gazelle, and goat, and all the animals of that class lived with the predynastic Egyptians in a more or less domestic state, and the paintings on pottery prove that they were well acquainted with them; on the other hand, the sheep, which forms such an important possession in Asia, was unknown to them. Even in the period of the Early Empire it was the “milk calf,” i.e., the sucking calf, and not the lamb, which was the symbol of innocence and helplessness. The ram which represents the god Khnemu may have belonged to an indigenous species which seems to have become extinct after the period of the XIIth Dynasty..

Flint arrow and spear heads, and flint cow's head (No. 32,124.), emblem of the goddess Hathor, in the British Mnsenm. Predynastic Period.

When the indigenous Egyptian was not hunting or at war he probably spent much time in making his flint weapons and tools, notwithstanding the fact that each tribe must have possessed its own skilled flint workers; for the most beautiful of the examples which have come down to us could only have been made by men who had devoted their lives to the art of working in flint. The art began at a very remote period, and it became more and more prosperous until man discovered how to work metal; the use of flint tools and knives did not at once disappear, as might be expected, but survived for a lengthy period, though chiefly in connection with religious and ceremonial customs. In the hieroglyphic inscriptions the use of flint was commemorated long after metal tools and weapons were generally used in Egypt; thus in the hieroglyphic for sickle the projections represent flint teeth, and in one of the ordinary words for knife, tes, we see that the last sign is the determinative for stone, a fact which takes us back to the time when knives were usually made of stone, i.e., flint or chert. It is generally agreed that all the flint weapons, etc., which have up to the present been found in predynastic graves, belong to the Neolithic Period, but a number of others, which have been attributed to the Palaeolithic Period, have also been brought from Egypt; the latter were found on the surface of the ground on plateaux lying at a height considerably above the level of the Nile, and not in workshops or near mines. They have formed the subjects of minute discussion and description, and such eminent authorities as Sir John Evans, K.C.B., and M. de Morgan have no hesitation in assigning them to the Palaeolithic Period; but, on the other hand, Dr. Forbes has come to the conclusion that “none of the surface“ ‘palaeolithic’ implements from Egypt and Somaliland have yet been clearly proved to belong to that period, while the probability is that the bulk of them are of much later date, and he thinks that they probably belong to the XIIth Dynasty, going back perhaps, but not probably, to the VIth Dynasty.” But the late General Pitt-Rivers discovered in 1881 some flakes of palaeolithic type, in situ, in gravel near the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings at Thebes, at a comparatively low level, which, as Dr. Forbes admits, all geologists who know the spot agree, must have been deposited far back in prehistoric times. The evidence of a Palaeolithic Age in Egypt, the existence of which appears to Sir John Evans to be in the highest degree probable, may rest on the flakes and very rude scraper-like flints found in the Bab al-Muluk gravels, but until it has been proved that General Pitt-Rivers was mistaken, the apparently supplementary evidence may not be lightly thrust aside. It may, however, be mentioned in passing that so high an authority as Canon W. Greenwell, F.R.S., has no doubt whatsoever about the existence of a Paleolithic Period in Egypt, and the researches which Professor Sayce has made in Egypt, and the positions of the Paleolithic flints which he has found in situ confirm this opinion. In any case the question is one which only geologists can usefully discuss, and the Egyptian archaeologist must wait until they arrive at a decision on the matter.

An examination of the flint weapons, tools, and implements of the neolithic period figured by M. de Morgan and Professor Petrie, shows that they include a number of forms and represent several methods of workmanship which are quite unknown in any country in the same age. Similarly, many forms which exist among the flint implements of other countries of the neolithic age have no equivalent among those of predynastic Egypt, and, according to M. de Morgan, the personal effects of the men who lived in the Nile Valley present certain well-defined peculiarities which seem to prove that the civilization of the Stone Age in Egypt suffered but very little from foreign influences, and that the indigenous peoples of that country were as little affected by such things as were their followers in dynastic times.

Flint implements of the Paleolithic and Neolithic Periods from Egypt, in the British Museum

 

In spite of the fact that most of the tools of the predynastic Egyptians were made of flint, it seems as if they possessed the knowledge of working in stone, for many stone vases, rudely shaped and poorly worked, it is true, have been found in their graves. The custom of depositing stone vases filled with offerings of all kinds was common in Egypt in every period, and it is certain that it originated among people whose object was not to offer vases and vessels but offerings whereon those who were buried were supposed to live, after they had entered upon their new life, until such time as they were able to provide for themselves in the world beyond the grave. The dynastic Egyptians adopted the custom, and, having metal tools at their command, they succeeded in producing vases of most delicate and beautiful forms out of very hard stones, such as diorite and haematite and the like ; a true idea of the variety of forms and of the excellence of the workmanship can only be obtained by examining a number of the best examples, a fine series of which will be found in the National Collection. The attempts of the earlier people to make figures in relief or otherwise were failures, but it is nearly certain that when they had been taught to use metal tools by their conquerors they became extremely useful workmen. Their want of success in working in stone was, however, counter­balanced by their skill in making objects of bone and ivory, as we may see from the numerous pendants, and combs, and figures of men and women, which have come down to us. An excellent example of their skill in working ivory is quoted by M. de Morgan, who describes the head of a mace found at Silsila; this interesting object is made out of the tusk of a hippopotamus, and having been sawn into shape at each end had a hole drilled through it in the middle. The ends show the saw marks quite clearly, and from their irregularity M. de Morgan assumes that the task of sawing was long and tedious; on the other hand, the hole by which it was fitted on to its handle was drilled with great regularity, and this was no doubt done by means of the drill used for making hollows in vases.

 

 

The pottery of the predynastic Egyptians was made without the help of the potter’s wheel, of which they had no knowledge, and the materials employed by them were Nile mud and clay; the latter, no doubt, was taken from special quarries, such as those at Aswan-and Kena, which were much worked by the dynastic Egyptians; fortunately a very large number of examples of their earthenware vessels have survived, and these proclaim that they were highly skilled in the potter’s art. Pottery made from the Nile mud became of a yellowish or reddish colour when baked, and that made of clay became a bright red; brown and black vessels were made from paste with which colouring matter, such as bioxide of manganese, had been mixed. The most interesting of all the classes of predynastic pottery are, of course, those which are ornamented with incised designs, linear and otherwise, and paintings, and those which are bi­coloured, red and black. The paste of which the red and black pottery is made is fine and porous, and was well kneaded before being worked into shape; the surface is highly polished, the polishing being done by flint polishers. The upper parts of the outsides of the vessels of this class, and all the insides, are black, while some of them have black outside lower parts only, but the black is due neither to smoke nor to the employment of a second kind of paste by the potter. Red and black pottery, like that wholly red, is frequently ornamented with designs in white, wherein geometric ornament, figures of men, animals, etc., are represented. Certainly of later period than these are all the classes of painted pottery in which the paste is fine, hard, and smooth, and of a yellowish colour, while the designs upon it, though resembling in some respects those which are in white on the pottery of an earlier period, are painted in red; such paintings represent wavy lines, spirals, branches of trees, lizards, oryxes, ostriches, boats, etc. This large group of pottery belongs, no doubt, to the end of the predynastic period, and it is most probable that the practice of making such in Egypt continued after the advent of the conquerors in that country. Extended research must result in a more exact system of classification of predynastic pottery, and, when further excavations of the cemeteries of the indigenous peoples in many other parts of Egypt have been made, it may be reasonably hoped that some chronological arrangements in groupings will be possible; but at present much of the dating is the result of the “scientific imagination,” or guesswork. During the early dynastic times pieces of pottery, which in shape and design recall some of the best examples of indigenous work, appear in the tombs, but speaking generally, at no time did the Egyptians of history succeed in surpassing their less cultured predecessors in the potter’s art. The paintings with which the latter decorated their pottery have all the characteristics of being the production of a people who had made some progress in drawing, but their designs are heavy, and they are executed in an almost childish manner, and the artists of that time had no knowledge of perspective. With the advent of the conquerors the potter’s art began to languish, and long before the end of the rule of the kings of the Early Empire it had well-nigh ceased to exist, at least as far as its connection with funeral rites was concerned.

 

From the above paragraphs on the predynastic Egyptians it will be seen that they were an indigenous, North African people, who lived chiefly by hunting and fishing, and who possessed many of the habits and manners and customs of tribes of men who live in the valleys, through which flow great rivers, or on plains, the soil of which has been brought down from higher lands by floods caused either by rains or the melting of the snow on the mountain ranges situated on them. They were great workers in flint, and their skill in fashioning this material into weapons, tools, and implements of all kinds is truly marvellous; they also possessed great skill in pottery making, which is the more to be admired because the potter’s wheel was unknown to them. They built no houses, or at least if they did no remains of them have been found, though they probably made habitations of reeds daubed with mud, or rude shelters, the sides of which were formed of mud, which, however, was not made into bricks, for of the brickmaker’s art they were ignorant. They were not cannibals, and their cemeteries seem to indicate that they were not a warlike race; of their position in the scale of civilization and development we can only judge by their attempts at sculpture and design, which it is easy to show were not of a high order. But notwithstanding these facts they succeeded in influencing their conquerors in many ways, and a number of the peculiarities which are made known to us by the inscriptions and other remains of the latter people originated among them. The conquerors and the conquered appear to have been totally distinct people, both physically and mentally, and as a natural result there was a distinct difference in their habits, and manners, and customs, and capabilities; this difference cannot be better illustrated than by a few remarks on their burial customs.

The earliest graves in the Nile Valley consisted of shallow hollows dug in the sandy, shingly ground which lies on the edge of the mud deposit and stretches away to the mountains on each side of the river; such hollows, though usually round, were extremely irregular in shape, and the object of the relatives of the dead seems to have been to get the body laid away in the ground with as little trouble and loss of time as possible. The graves were made close together, in fact they were sometimes so close that a body lay partly in one hollow and partly in another; whether at the period when such graves were  made it was customary to delimit them or not cannot be said, but in any case, if partitions or dividing walls ever existed, they have since disappeared. The body was put on the bare ground in the grave, lying on its left side, with the head usually towards the south, and the knees were bent up on a level with the top of the breast, and the hands placed before the face; round about the body were placed vessels of rude shapes, made of coarse earthenware, wherein funeral offerings were laid, and many graves contain flint weapons and implements. Some bodies were wrapped in the skins of gazelle fastened together by thongs of the same material, and others were both wrapped in and laid upon mats made of reeds or rushes. No attempt was made to mummify the body in the usual sense of the word, and there is no evidence to show that efforts were made to preserve it from natural decay; at this period the custom of burning the body, wholly or partly, had not been introduced. In some graves of the period, but these of course belong to the latter part of it, pottery of a better class is found, with worked flints and pendants made of bone and ivory, etc., and in a very few cases metal objects are found. Such graves had no superstructures, and their position in the ground was probably marked by some simple method, such as covering them with stones or pebbles, or by sticks placed upright in the ground, as is the case among the tribes of North Africa and the Sudan to the present day.

In the second class of predynastic graves excavated by M. de Morgan, the body having been burnt, wholly or partly, the remains were thrown carelessly into a shallow hollow in the ground; in cases where the body was completely burnt, the bones lie scattered about in the grave in great disorder, but when it was only partly burnt, care was taken to keep the bones of the hands and the feet together, and to set the head, which was usually severed from the body, by itself, either upon the ground or upon a stone. In many graves the body is found to have been dismembered, and its various limbs are disposed in such a way as to occupy the least possible space; and some graves of the earlier period have been found to contain remains of bodies which had been dismembered. The remains of bodies which had been burnt were often laid in rectangular earthenware chests or boxes which were provided with covers, but, as in the case of those buried in graves, the bones were scattered about in great disorder; the objects which are found with such remains show that this custom belongs to the end of the predynastic period. About this time also bodies, though bent up in the position in which the dead were bent in the earliest predynastic graves, were buried on their backs under constructions of earthenware which resemble large bowls inverted. Thus we see that the funeral customs of the indigenous Egyptians were quite different from those of the Egyptians of dynastic times, and that the graves of the earlier people are entirely different, both as regards form and position, from those of the later. Moreover, the main divisions of the tombs of the dynastic Egyptians, i.e., the mummy-chamber, the shaft or corridor, and the chapel or hall for offerings, represent funeral customs and beliefs which were unknown to their semi-barbarous ancestors. It is possible to assert that the tombs of the kings and noblemen who lived during the period of the first four dynasties are developments of the brick graves, with their recesses and “pits,” which were in use in late predynastic times, but the slight similarities observed are, most probably, more the result of accident than design.

Of the religious beliefs and views of the predynastic Egyptians but little can be said, but it is self-evident that the living would never have made funeral offerings to the dead unless they had believed that they would live again in some form or other, and judging from the flint weapons and implements found in their graves, we are no doubt right in assuming that the life which they thought their dead would inherit after death would be lived under conditions which resembled those under which they had lived upon earth. Whether they had formulated any ideas in the earliest period as to the existence of a divine power cannot be said, but there is good reason for thinking that they had, and also that such ideas were not on the level with those which we are accustomed to find among peoples who are barbarous or semi-savage.