Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, December 1898: Volume LIV, No. 2, December 1898Various
Science
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, December 1898: Volume LIV, No. 2, December 1898
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
The Egyptian finds of stone implements present the peculiarity as
compared with those of Europe, that types are found associated
together belonging to what would be regarded in other countries
as very different epochs. The time may come when subdivisions can
be made of the Egyptian stone age, but the study has not yet been
pursued far enough to make this practicable at present. Among these
articles are hatchets showing the transitions, examples of which
are wanting in Europe, from the rudest stone hammer to the polished
neolithic implement; knives of various shape and some of handsome
workmanship; scrapers, lance heads, arrowheads, saws, pins, bodkins,
maces, beads, bracelets, and combs. The large number of instruments
with toothed blades found at some of the stations may be regarded
as pointing to a very extensive cultivation of cereals at the time
they were in use. The deposits of Tukh, Zarraïdah, Khattarah,
Abydos, etc., situated in regions suitable for growing grain, yield
thousands of them, while they are very rare at the fishing station of
Dimeh. That the use of sickles tipped with flint very probably lasted
long after the introduction of metals seems to be proved by the
hieroglyphics; but very few evidences of the existence of such tools
are found after the middle empire.
No traces of articles related to the religion of the Pharaohs are
found in the burial places of the aborigines. In place of the
statuettes and funerary divinities of later times are found rude
figurines of animals cut in green schists. They represent fishes,
tortoises with eyes adorned with hard stone or nacre, and numerous
signs the origin of which is unknown, and were apparently regarded
as fetiches or divinities. Articles of pottery are very numerous,
very crude, and of a great variety of forms. It is not necessary to
suppose that the people who have left these relics were savages or
barbarians. History and even the present age afford instances of
many peoples who have obtained considerable degrees of civilization
while backward in some of the arts. It is hardly possible to
achieve delicacy of design and finish without the use of metals. I
believe I have shown that an age of stone once existed in Egypt,
and that it furthermore played an important part, even in Pharaonic
civilization.--_Translated for the Popular Science Monthly from the
Author's Recherches sur les Origines de l'Egypte._
SUPERSTITION AND CRIME.
BY PROF. E. P. EVANS.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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