It is not, of course, to be expected that we should discover direct contemporary historical testimony amongst any people of their being in this condition, for in no case do we find a knowledge of writing developed in this stage of culture; and yet, apart from the material relics of this phase of progress which are found from time to time in the soil, there is to be obtained in most civilized countries indirect circumstantial evidence of the former use of stone implements, even where those of metal had been employed for centuries before authentic history commences. It is in religious customs and ceremonies—in rites which have been handed down from generation to generation, and in which the minute and careful repetition of ancient observances is indeed often the essential religious element—that such evidence is to be sought. As has already been observed by others, the transition from ancient to venerable, from venerable to holy, is as natural as it is universal; |8| and in the same manner as some of the festivals and customs of Christian countries are directly traceable to heathen times, so no doubt many of the religious observances of ancient times were relics of what was even then a dim past. Whatever we may think of the etymology of the word as given by Cicero,[29] Lactantius,[30] or Lucretius,[31] there is much to be said in favour of Dr. E. B. Tylor’s[32] view of superstition being “the standing over of old habits into the midst of a new and changed state of things—of the retention of ancient practices for ceremonial purposes, long after they had been superseded for the commonplace uses of ordinary life.” Such a standing over of old customs we seem to discover among most of the civilized peoples of antiquity. Turning to Egypt and Western Asia, the early home of European civilization, we find from Herodotus[33] and from Diodorus Siculus,[34] that in the rite of embalming, though the brain was removed by a crooked iron, yet the body was cut open by a sharp Ethiopian stone. In several European museums are preserved thin, flat, leaf-shaped knives of cherty flint found in Egypt, some of which will be mentioned in subsequent pages. In character of workmanship their correspondence with the flint knives or daggers of Scandinavia is most striking. Many, however, are provided with a tang at one end at the back of the blade, and in this respect resemble metallic blades intended to be mounted by means of a tang driven into the haft. In the British Museum is an Egyptian dagger-like instrument of flint, from the Hay collection, still mounted in its original wooden handle, apparently by a central tang, and with remains of its skin sheath. It is shown on the scale of one-fourth in Fig. 1. There is also a polished stone knife broken at the handle, which bears upon it in hieroglyphical characters the name of PTAHMES, an officer. [Illustration: EGYPT.—Fig. 1.]