There are reasons for believing that some, at any rate, of the gold used during the period of the Old Kingdom was of foreign origin. Professor Flinders Petrie tells me that Dr. Gladstone made for him an analysis of the gold object found in the tomb of King Khasakhemui, of the second dynasty, who reigned, according to the chronology we are using, about 3200 /B.C./ He found on this gold object a red crust, which he stated was antimoniate of gold. Now it appears that antimony will only combine with gold in the presence of tellurium, and Professor Petrie tells me that he has been advised that there is no known source of this ore, telluride of gold and antimony, except in Transylvania. I have been informed that all the gold found within the Carpathian ring is of this nature, but as the richest sources lie in Transylvania, where gold was worked by the Romans, the conclusion is the same, that before 3200 /B.C./ the Egyptians were obtaining gold from Central Europe. As it seems unlikely that gold would be carried between such distant points as the valleys of the Danube and the Nile by the old method of bartering from tribe to tribe, especially since there are so many physical obstacles on the route, including the Taurus range, it seems more likely that we should see here evidence for an organised sea commerce. Not that I would imply a direct sea traffic from the Danube to the Nile, but that some intermediate people, probably some islanders in the Ægean, the people perhaps of Melos or Crete, traded on the one hand with settlements near the mouth of the Danube and with those in the Delta as well. The obsidian trade of Melos may well be as early as this, in fact it seems to have been on the decline by 3000 /B.C./, and we find Cretan trade flourishing only a few centuries later. Either or both of these islands might well have been responsible for this traffic. Oversea trade, then, was in existence, if not very highly developed, during the early days of metal, the centuries preceding 3000 /B.C./ The knowledge of copper, and the possibility of making copper nails and wire, must have given a great impetus to ship building, which must at this stage have passed from the use of rafts and dug-outs to that of boats built as we know them now. But a new discovery, greater even in some respects than those which I have been describing, was still further to encourage oversea traffic.