14. The greatest interest of El Kab lay in the light that it shed on the same civilisation which had been disclosed two years before at the cemeteries of Naqada and Ballas. In these we had examined 3000 graves of a type till then unknown, and as different from the graves of the historic Egyptians as if they had come from China or Peru. The most obvious characteristic of these burials was the position of the body, which always lay in a contracted attitude, with the head to the south, never at full length, as in all other Egyptian interments. All the furniture of the graves--beads, slate palettes, green paint, ashes, flint knives and pottery--were of novel types, and without any admixture of the mirrors, ushabtis, scarabs, or any of the other furniture of ordinary tombs. Hieroglyphic inscriptions were also absent. The results of the excavations were published in "Naqada and Ballas," and the main conclusions there set forth were that these graves were the interments of a foreign race, differing from the Egyptians of the dynastic periods in physical features and in habits; that they were probably a white race akin to the modern non-Semitic inhabitants of North Africa; and, further, that they invaded Egypt at the close of the Old Kingdom, and were again expelled by the rising strength of the Xth and XIth dynasties. [These people were at first called by Dr. Petrie "the New Race," but they have received other names. M. de Morgan, in his Ethnographic Préhistorique, has attributed this class of monuments to the Neolithic period, and called the men of the contracted burials "les indigènes." The name "Libyans" has also obtained some vogue; it emphasises the undoubted distinction of race between this people and the historic Egyptians, and may perhaps be used as a general name for the people of the contracted burials until a clearer distinction than is now possible be made between (_a_) the Neolithic period before the advent of the dynastic Egyptians; (_b_) the time between the Egyptian arrival and the consolidation of the kingdom under Menes; and (_c_) the first three dynasties.] 15. The conclusion that these people differed from the Egyptians has not been much disputed, but the above dating has been opposed, and the evidence from El Kab convinced me that we were wrong, and that M. de Morgan was right in attributing the bulk of this civilisation to the praedynastic period. Of this dating, the remarkable finds of M. Amélineau at Abydos, and those of M. de Morgan himself at Naqada, have given very strong proof; but the more fragmentary evidence of El Kab, which led me independently to the same conclusion, may retain still a certain interest.