In order to explain such resemblances between the early cultures of Sumer and Egypt, it was necessary to seek some channel by which the influence of the former country could have reached the valley of the Nile; and a solution of the problem was found in the theory of a Semitic invasion of Upper Egypt towards the end of the predynastic period. That a Semitic element existed in the composition of the ancient Egyptian language is established beyond dispute; and this fact was combined with the Egyptian legends of their origin on the Red Sea coast, and with the situation of the predynastic and early dynastic cemeteries in Upper Egypt, in support of the theory that Semitic tribes, already imbued with Sumerian culture, had reached the Nile from the shore of the Red Sea by way of the Wâdi Hammamât. According to this view the Neolithic and predynastic population of Egypt was of a different race to the early dynastic Egyptians. The former were regarded as indigenous to the country, speaking a language possibly akin to the Berber dialects of North Africa. With little or no knowledge of metal, they were pictured as offering a stubborn but unsuccessful resistance to their Semitic conquerors. The latter were assumed to have brought with them a copper age culture, ultimately derived from the Sumerians of Babylonia. Crossing from southern Arabia by the Straits of Bab el-Mandeb, and making their way northward along the western shore of the Red Sea, they would have reached the Nile in the neighbourhood of Koptos. Here they would have formed their first settlements, and, after subduing the older inhabitants of Upper Egypt, they would have pushed their way northwards along the valley of the Nile.[1]