History, Ancient; Human beings -- Origin; Prehistoric peoples
These objections, however, cannot apply to the evidence which has
been afforded by the discovery of flint implements, both of the
neolithic and palæolithic type, in many localities and by various
skilled observers. Professor Haynes found, a few miles east of Cairo,
not only a number of flint implements of the types usual in Europe,
but an actual workshop or manufactory where they had been made,
showing that they had not been imported, but produced in the country
in the course of its native development. He also found multitudes
of worked flints of the ordinary neolithic and palæolithic types
scattered on the hills near Thebes. Lenormant and Hamy saw the same
workshop and remains of the stone period, and various other finds
have been reported by other observers. Finally, General Pitt-Rivers
and Professor Haynes found well-developed palæolithic implements of
the St. Acheul type, not only on the surface and in superficial
deposits, but from six and a half to ten feet deep in hard stratified
gravel at Djebel-Assas, near Thebes, in a terrace on the side of one
of the ravines falling from the Libyan desert into the Nile valley,
which was certainly deposited in early quaternary ages by a torrent
pouring down from a plateau where, under existing geographical and
climatic conditions, rain seldom or never falls. These relics, as
Mr. Campbell says, who was associated with General Pitt-Rivers in the
discovery, are "beyond calculation older than the oldest Egyptian
temples and tombs," and they certainly go far to prove that the high
civilization of Egypt at the earliest dawn of history or tradition
had been a plant of extremely slow growth from a state of provincial
savagery.
[Illustration: STATUE OF PRINCE RAHOTEP'S WIFE. (Refined type.)
(Gizeh Museum.--Discovered in 1870 in a tomb near
Meydoon.--According to the chronological table of Mariette, it is
5800 years old.--From a photograph by Sebah, Cairo.)]
It is remarkable that all the traditions of the Egyptians represent
them as being autochthonous. There is no legend of any immigration,
no Oannes who comes out of the sea and teaches the arts of
civilization. On the contrary, Thoth and Osiris are native Egyptian
gods or kings, who reigned long ago in Egyptian cities. There are
no legends of an inferior race who were exterminated or driven up
the Nile; though it would seem from the portraits on early monuments
that there were two types in the very early ages one coarse and
approximating to the African, the other a refined and aristocratic
type, more resembling that of the highest Asiatic or Arabian races.
[Illustration: KHUFU-ANKH AND HIS SERVANTS--EARLY EGYPTIANS.
(Coarse type.)]
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