THE PREDYNASTIC PERIOD

THE nature and range of our archaeological and historical material give Egypt the priority in a survey of the development of the Ancient East. The earliest period, is the predynastic or prehistoric: it is called predynastic because it precedes the 1st Dynasty of Manetho's list, and prehistoric because it antedates the earliest surviving written records. The period is a discovery of the close of the nineteenth century. When the excavation of Nakada in 1895 by Flinders Petrie revealed crouched burials surrounded by black-topped ware and other now familiar types of hand-made pottery, the contrast which these burials and objects presented with those previously known in Egypt suggested to him a “New Race” which must have entered Egypt at some period during the early dynasties. But others pointed out that this this New Race we were at last face to face with the earliest inhabitants, excluding those of the Palaeolithic Age, of the Nile valley. Since this time predynastic cemeteries have come to light in considerable numbers, and it may reasonably be said that we are as well acquainted with the material civilization of this era as with that of any other in Egyptian history, though at the same time it has to be admitted that our knowledge of its actual history amounts to practically nothing.

It will best serve the present purpose if we begin by describing the remains actually found, and then proceed to draw from them whatever conclusions are possible regarding the civilization of this remote era. And since the period is known to us mainly from its cemeteries, we have to reverse the natural order of things, and learn all we can of the treatment of the dead before we proceed to ask what is known of the living.

I.  THE EVIDENCE OF THE CEMETERIES

The typical predynastic tomb consists of a shallow pit cut in the sand or in the soft rock which usually underlies the sand. In the earliest times it is usually circular, but, later, rectangular types, often with slightly rounded edges, come into use. At the bottom of this pit lies the body in a tightly contracted position, that is to say with the knees drawn up towards the chin and the arras bent at the elbows in such a way that the hands are in front of the face. The import of this position will be examined below; for the moment we must describe the later development of the grave itself. At first it had been usual to lay the body in the centre of the tomb, which indeed was only just large enough to hold it, and to place the vases and other objects round it. Later, especially in rich graves where numerous offerings were to be made, a special step or ledge of rock was left when digging the grave, in most cases on the west side. On this ledge were placed the larger vases, while the body with its ornaments and often the smaller vases and other objects lay in the deeper part of the pit. A further development soon followed. The shelf, in order to accommodate more vases, was broadened until it threatened to occupy the whole pit to the exclusion of the body. To obviate this a recess was cut to hold the body in the side of the grave opposite to the ledge. In some cases this recess is so large as to rival in size the original pit, from which it is occasionally divided by a fence of wattle or a wall of mud brick.

The latest of the predynastic tombs sometimes have a lining of mud brick round the edges of the rectangular pit, a form which persisted into the dynastic period. Many of these tombs were probably not roofed in any way, but merely filled up to the desert level with the sand which had been taken out of them; others however were covered with a primitive roof of wood surmounted by a layer of mud. No traces of a superstructure have ever been found.

The body was not mummified in any way, but was in many cases simply laid in the grave without any covering or protection; occasionally it was wrapped in the skin of some animal, and frequently it was covered with a reed mat. Sometimes the body was placed beneath an inverted pot, more rarely in a true coffin of pottery: both methods of burial seem to be confined to the later phases of the period. At Mahasna (north of Abydos) the coffin consisted of four planks placed in the position of the four sides of a box, but with neither bottom nor lid; in some cases the planks were so placed as to constitute a wooden lining to the pit rather than a true coffin for the body. The normal position for the body was on its left side. This position was used in the very large majority of the tombs in all the cemeteries known to us, with the exception of el-Amrah (south of Abydos), where the position on the right side was normal in the earlier phases of the period.

Practically all predynastic tombs were placed with their longer axis lying local north and south, i.e. parallel to the course of the Nile at that particular point. The significance of this custom is wholly unknown, but the care with which it was observed suggests that it may have involved a religious idea of great importance. The head generally lay towards the south, but the rule was not invariable, and at Turra (south of Cairo), in particular, there were numerous exceptions. Why the body was always placed in the contracted position is uncertain. Some have suggested that it was used in order to save room in the cemeteries. Others think it was the natural position of rest or sleep, while yet others affirm that the limbs of the dead man were tightly bound up with cords in order to prevent him from doing harm to the living. But perhaps the most widely approved suggestion is mat the posture is em­bryonic, i.e. that of the fetus in the womb, and symbolizes the return of the mortal to the womb of earth from which he came. It is unnecessary to discuss here the value of these speculations, we need only note that any attempt at explanation must reckon with the very wide distribution of this peculiar custom in early times in Europe, North Africa and nearer Asia.

Several excavators have called attention to the occurrence of predynastic tombs in which, though there was no trace of subsequent disturbance, the bones of the skeleton appeared to lie out of their natural order. From this fact they inferred that in certain cases the body was either cut up before burial, or else buried provisionally in some other spot and only removed to the tomb in which it was found after natural decay had allowed the skeleton to become disarticulated. Although there are parallels for these practices elsewhere, some archaeologists still totally deny their existence in Egypt. Nevertheless a dispassionate examination of the evidence suggests that it is more prudent to preserve an open mind, even though some of the cases quoted as examples of dismemberment can be explained away. The discovery of partly dismembered bodies inside untouched linen wrappings at De-shasheh points to the practice of this custom in the early dynastic period, and it would therefore be in no way surprising to find it already obtaining in the predynastic Age.

The body having been laid in the tomb it only remained to place around it the funerary provision. This consisted to a great extent of vases of food and drink. It is probable that the vases in which the offerings were placed were in many cases made especially for the occasion, and were not those which the deceased had been in the habit of using in his lifetime. Along with these, however, were frequently placed objects which he had actually used, and which, were very often worn or damaged by use. Thus with a man were buried tools and weapons of copper, flint or stone, while a woman was equipped with her ornaments, necklaces of beads, and armlets of flint, slate or ivory, malachite to make eye-paint, and a slate palette and pebble wherewith to grind it.

PREDYNASTIC SETTLEMENTS      

Of the manner in which the predynastic people lived we can form fairly accurate conjectures from the contents of their tombs. But fortunately we can do more than this, for several sites are known on which they actually dwelt. Some of these may be described as kitchen-middens. They consist simply of heaps formed by the refuse of everyday life, bones, shells, pottery, worn or broken flints, etc. Several of these early settlements at Ballas, Mahasna and Abydos, have been more closely examined. All lie on the sandy edge of the desert. At Ballas there were remains of mud-brick houses. At Mahasna were discovered sockets in which the excavators conjecture that there must have stood poles supporting huts or tents; but the absence of more solid remains leads us to suppose that the dwellings were either of very flimsy material or, if of wood, were capable of removal in sections. At Abydos two large hearths were found, from five to six meters in diameter, consisting simply of heaps of wood-ash containing fragments of bone and pottery. The objects of flint and pottery found in this settlement, were, as a whole, like those of Ballas, much rougher than those drawn from the contemporary graves, though no type found, in me graves was entirely unrepresented. This makes it quite clear that the objects buried with the dead were mainly chosen from his finer and more valuable possessions. Indeed it is not altogether improbable that some of the better types of pottery were manufactured purely for funerary use.

On the edge of three of these settlements were found structures consisting each of a number of deep open-mouthed jars, about a meter in height, coming to a point below, and arranged in two parallel rows placed so close as almost to interlock. Each vase was supported beneath by a number of vertical fire-bars of clay, and the whole structure was surrounded by a low wall and roofed over, leaving the mouths of the vases free. Around and among the fire bars were found large quantities of charred wood, and close investigation showed that the whole formed a kind of slow-combustion furnace designed to keep at a moderate temperature for some length of time a certain substance placed in the jars; this when analyzed proved to consist of grains of wheat. Analogies from other countries and ages tend to show that these kilns were used for drying wheat with the purpose of increasing its keeping properties, rather than for parching it in order to facilitate grinding. However this may be, it shows clearly mat the predynastic people were not only agriculturalists, but that they were quite well acquainted with the problems of storing their grain.

The state of civilization to which these people had attained at the moment when their appearance is first revealed to us in the Nile valley was in many senses a high one. Some think that they were still in the neolithic stage; others, relying on unpublished evidence from the excavations at Nag ed-Der (opposite Girgeh), believe that copper was already being gradually introduced during this period. What is certain is that long before the 1st Dynasty copper was used in considerable quantities for arms and implements. Within this same period gold and silver both came into use, and in two tombs of the Middle Predynastic Period, near Medum, were found beads of hammered iron, in one case strung alternately with others of gold.

But throughout the predynastic age the substance most used for implements and weapons was not metal but flint. There was no difficulty in obtaining material, for the limestone cliffs of Egypt contain flint nodules without number, many of which are of a quality which readily lends itself to minute and accurate work­ing. It was, therefore, to be foreseen that the flint industry in Egypt would attain to a very high level, and it did in fact reach an excellence which has never been surpassed. For ordinary uses implements of a simple type were made, and no more work was, done on them than was necessary to give the desired surface and edge. But for the finer products a very different method was pursued. In order to secure a perfectly even surface from which regular flakes could be removed by pressure, the implement was first roughly shaped by coarse flaking, and the whole surface was then ground smooth. The implement now possessed all the necessary qualities except sharpness and durability of edge, which could only be produced by taking off minute flakes from the edge. The Egyptian was, however, not satisfied merely to do this, for he proceeded to remove a double series of rippling flakes from the face, and in many cases to fit the edge of the implement with minute and almost invisible teeth. The tool was then complete, except that in some cases it was fitted with an artistic handle of wood, ivory, bone or gold.

POTTERY AND STONE VASES      

Next in importance to the making of weapons to defend himself and to hunt, and implements wherewith to pursue the occupations by which he lives, the savage ranks the preparation of vessels in which to cook and eat his food and store the products of his agriculture. And it is here that in Egypt a paradox meets us, for, at the moment when he entered Egypt, the primitive potter was producing vases so admirable from the technical and artistic point of view that his successors never surpassed and seldom equaled them. He had learned to clean his clay by mixing it with water and removing the coarser particles which settled first at the bottom; knowing that a pure clay is apt to crack in the firing, he introduced into his paste a proportion of small grams of quartz or limestone; despite his ignorance of the potter’s wheel he molded his shapes so perfectly that its absence is never felt; and, last but not least, he belonged to one of those rare and happy periods when the craftsman seems incapable of an error of taste, and in con­sequence almost every form that leaves his hands is a thing of beauty. The vase once molded he coated it with a slip of finer clay in which a quantity of powdered hematite had been mixed, and after a short drying in the sun polished its surface with a smooth pebble or a spatula of bone. There now remained only the firing. But here too experience had taught him something. Old  he require the vase to retain the red hematite color, he placed it clear of the glowing embers in the open flame; did he on the other hand wish to produce a bichrome effect, he placed it mouth downwards in the fire, whereupon that part of the surface which was covered by the ashes surrendered a portion of its oxygen and turned into the magnetic oxide of iron, which is black, while that on the exposed portion, free to draw oxygen from the air, remained in  the form of the red oxide. The result was the well-known red-polished pottery with a black top. Having dis­covered a white pigment which would withstand the action of fire, the potter was further able to draw simple geometric and even naturalistic designs on his red-polished or black-topped wares, and so to produce what may be the world's first painted pottery.

But the Egyptian predynastic potter possessed a piece of know­ledge more extraordinary than any yet described. Not only had he discovered that sand when combined with potash or soda and a metallic oxide will vitrify at a certain temperature; but he had realized the possibilities of this glaze for decorative purposes; he had learned to color it blue with a salt of copper, to make it adhere to the substance on which it was to be laid, and to produce a fire of sufficient temperature to fuse it.

The hardness of stone had no terrors for the predynastic crafts­man. It is true that in the earliest tombs stone vases are rare or even absent, but in the Middle Predynastic Period the drill had already been discovered, perhaps as a direct consequence of the working of copper Equipped with this instrument and doubtless with an inexhaustible store of patience, the Egyptian found no stone too hard for him to work, and indeed the diorites with their fine surfaces were among his favorites. Here again, as in the case of pottery, he arrived at astonishing accuracy and beauty of form, and his achievements in the harder stones were never surpassed in later days.

PHYSICAL TYPE AND LANGUAGE     

Passing from the products to the authors of them we have next to ask what manner of man was the predynastic Egyptian. Anthropological researches carried out in Egypt during the last twenty years enable us to form a very good idea of his physical characteristics and his racial affinities. He belonged in the first place to a remarkably homogeneous and unmixed race. He was a small man, the average stature being under 5 feet 5 inches in the case of men and 5 feet in the case of women. He was of a slender and almost effeminate build; though his limb bones possess certain characteristics (platycnemia and platymeria) commonly supposed to indicate great muscular strength. His hair was dark-brown or black, wavy or almost straight, sometimes even curly, though never woolly like that of the negro. He possessed very little facial hair, but a small pointed beard and slight moustache were generally permitted to grow.

His skull was of the long and narrow type known as dolicho­cephalic. This at once ranks him with the early neolithic peoples of the Mediterranean as opposed to the Armenoid or Alpine race, which seems to have penetrated into central Europe from Asia towards the end of the neolithic period and to branches of which the bronze age civilization of north Italy and possibly the geometric civilization in Greece were due. The early Egyptian skulls when viewed from above present a long angular pentagonal appearance. The face is oval and pointed, the jaw narrow and sharp, and the nose apt to be flat, especially in the females. There is no doubt that this race formed the base of the population of Egypt far down into dynastic times, and that a strong admixture of it remains even today in the more isolated villages. As far as can be ascertained at present it remained quite uncontaminated until the end of the Predynastic Period, when it gradually became mixed with another element possessing a skull of a much broader type, an element drawn from the Armenoid branch referred to above, and known in Egypt as the Gizeh race, from the site on which its presence was first observed .

The  pioneer of this anthropological work in Egypt, Elliot Smith, insists most strongly on the homogeneity of the predynastic race up to the beginning of the dynastic era in the cemeteries examined by him in Upper Egypt. At Tarkhan, however, which is much further downstream, between Cairo and Wasta, the measurements of the long bones of the skeletons, which were found to give clearer results than other parts have suggested to Flinders Petrie that in the second half of the Predynastic Period there was a distinct reduction in the stature of the race, which continued well into the dynastic age. This change he attributes to the rapid infiltration of a new people, the dynastic Race, who were shorter than the predynastic Egyptian and, as he thought, probably came from Elam. Should anthropologists decide that the changes recorded by Petrie require the supposition of a new people to explain them, and if no similar changes in these same measurements are noticed in the cemeteries further up the Nile, we shall probably be compelled to believe that the dynastic people came in from the north, and for some time only occupied the northern portion of Upper Egypt. We shall return to the question later.

The language spoken by the predynastic inhabitants of Upper Egypt was in all probability the same as that used in the dynastic epoch. Unfortunately no proof of this can at present be given, but if the bulk of the population remained unaltered in type, and if the infiltration of the Armenoid element was very gradual, the assumption that no change of tongue took place is by no means hazardous. At the same time it is to be regretted that we have not a single undoubted specimen of predynastic writing. This is the more remarkable in view of the fact that in certain of the royal tombs of the 1st Dynasty we find the system of hieroglyphic writing so highly developed that it must already have been long in use, and had already acquired a cursive or hieratic script, written in ink. A slate palette of undoubted predynastic date, found at el-Amrah, has in relief two signs which might conceivably be hieroglyphs; one of these may be an early form of the cult object of Min, but the other is no known hieroglyph, and no conclusion ought to be drawn from the group. Of the early inscribed cylinder-seals none can be definitely proved to be earlier than the rise of the 1st Dynasty, the predynastic examples showing only designs of animals and birds, with in one case a star, and in another what appears to be a building. Further, it is doubtful whether any of the slate palettes which show undoubted hieroglyphs can be dated as predynastic. On the other hand, the crude combination of elementary true writing with pictorial representation so admirably illustrated by the great palette of Narmer warns us that if this document is a fair sample of tee stage which writing had reached at this moment (beginning of the 1st Dynasty or just earlier), and not an archaism, very little n the way of writing is to be expected from the period which preceded it. At the same time it is singular that nothing at all has up to the present made its appearance.  

Of the religion of the predynastic Egyptian we know practically nothing. Judging by the existence of a pronounced animal element in the cults of the dynastic period it may be suspected that in earlier times Egypt passed through a true totemic stage. This hypothesis is not susceptible of proof, though several facts have been observed which are fully consistent with it. Such a theory would explain, for instance, the custom of representing the king of Egypt under the form of an animal, such as a bull, a lion, a scorpion or a hawk, though it must be admitted that there are, in some cases at least, other possible explanations. On the predynastic vases with designs in red on a buff ground we find representations of boats on which are standards supporting what are generally supposed to be the cult objects of various districts. Among these are the hawk and the elephant, which, it is suggested, may have been totems of two tribes. Similarly, among the later nome-signs of Egypt, which undoubtedly have a very early origin, are several which may be totemic in origin, though we are always confronted with the difficulty that many of these birds and animals may be nothing more than hieroglyphs carrying a purely phonetic value. Finally, some writers believe that the animals which so frequently appear on the carved slate palettes, on the ivory knife-handles and combs, and on the cylinder-seals of predynastic days are totemic in origin. The precarious nature of all this evidence need hardly be pointed out, and were it not for the theriomorphic element in the later religion the suggestion could not be ventured that Egypt ever passed through a totemic stage.

The distribution in the Nile valley of the predynastic culture is quite clear. In the Delta it has not as yet been found; but since the earlier strata in this part of Egypt are usually unattainable owing to the rise in the water level no conclusions whatsoever can be drawn from this negative evidence. From Turra, 8 miles south of Cairo, predynastic cemeteries and settlements extend up into Nubia, being perhaps most thickly scattered north and south of Coptos and the mouth of the Wadi Hammamat. Throughout the whole of this long stretch of land the civilization seems to have been quite homogeneous up to the moment of transition to the Dynastic Period, when a distinct tendency to fall behind is observed in Nubia. Whatever views we may hold as to the origin of the predynastic people of Egypt—and there are some who believe that they entered Upper Egypt from the south by way of Nubia—it is at least clear that the cultural influences which produced the high civilization of the early dynasties first came into play in Egypt itself, and only gradually permeated Nubia.

II.   DATA FOR HISTORY

The length and date of the Predynastic Period are matters of very great uncertainty. The terminus ad quem depends purely on the length assigned to the various dynastic periods, whether on astronomical or on other grounds, a matter which has already been discussed.  As regards the duration of the period it may at once be said that all attempts to estimate it by the amount of development which took place during its course are the merest guesswork, and, as such, devoid of value. Had we, as in the case of the Later Intermediate Period (between the XIIth and XVIIIth Dynasties), a dated era both before and after it with which com­parisons in rate of progress could be established, we might, if we proceeded with caution, reach a result which had some likelihood of accuracy. But as this is not the case we are helpless, and most scholars are content to believe that the period ended a few centuries before 3000 BC. Petrie, however, has proposed to date the earliest predynastic graves to not later than 8000 BC, and the latest to about 5500, arguing from the similarity of certain flint implements of the egyptian graves to those of the Magdalenian era in Europe, and also to those of the great flint-working period in Scandinavia. It is not possible to discuss in full this argument; the present writer doubts the legitimacy of comparing flints in widely distant areas, and is not prepared to push the Magdalenian epoch down to say 7000  BC, and that of the finest Scandinavian flints up to that date.

If, however, we cannot fix either the date or the length of the Predynastic Period we have at least a means of dating relatively within the period itself; and it was indeed a step forward in pre­dynastic research when Petrie, at Diospolis Parva, invented the now famous method of “Sequence Dating”. The basis of this is typological. It was noticed that in certain forms of pottery vase, furnished with a wavy ridge of clay on each shoulder in place of a handle, the ridge gradually degenerated and lost its size and its form until it became nothing more than a useless line scratched on the pot. At the same time the form of these vases degenerated in a perfectly definite direction. This enabled them to be placed with considerable accuracy in chronological order; and, by observing the forms of the other objects found with particular types of wavy-handled vases, chronological series of these too were easily established. The whole predynastic and Early Dynastic Period was divided into intervals numbered from 30 to 1oo, the series 1-29 being left blank in case still earlier graves should in future be discovered. The type series was then equated with the successive intervals of this so-called Sequence Dating, with the result that if we find a predynastic tomb we can at once assign it to its correct position in the series. It must be clearly understood that the units of dating are not necessarily equal, and that the space from 30 to 40 might conceivably be twice or three times the length of that between 50 and 60, or vice versa. But despite the severe criticism which the system has met with in some quarters, and despite its obviously approximate character, it still remains a convenient and practical way of dating predynastic tombs and objects. The whole period is now generally divided into three subperiods. Early Predynastic, Sequence Date 30 to 40; Middle Predynastic, 40 to 60; and Late Predynastic, 60 to 78, the end of which marks the rise of the 1st Dynasty.

EGYPTIAN CALENDAR 

One other consideration must not be forgotten in trying to estimate the length of the predynastic civilization, namely the date of the introduction of the Egyptian Calendar. The nature of the “Sothic cycle” and the relation between the civil and Sothic years, have been discussed in an earlier chapter. Now since the first season of the year is called the Inundation Season, it is manifest that the civil calendar can only have been introduced at a moment when its first day coincided with the heliacal rising of Sothis which occurs on July 19th of the Julian Calendar, and marks the beginning of the rise of the Nile. In other words, at a certain moment the early Egyptian, having for some time observed that the length of the year was about 365 days, definitely introduced a calendar with a year of this length, and for its first day naturally chose that most important of all days in Egypt, the beginning of the fertilizing rise of the Nile, a day rendered the more striking because it coincided with the day of the heliacal rising of Sirius. This coincidence took place at the beginning of each Sothic period, and of the two which alone deserve consideration here, namely those which began in 2781 and BC respectively, the latter can be shown to be by far the more probable.

Thus, unless there be some unsuspected flaw in the astronomical evidence, we are faced with the conclusion that as early as 4241 BC the Nile valley was already inhabited by a people civilized enough to observe the risings of stars and to fix the length of the solar year within a few hours. Would it not seem, then, that attempts to shorten the Predynastic Period in such a way as to bring its terminus a quo down to 4000 BC or even later are misguided? To this question it may be replied that the predynastic remains which it is proposed to date in this way all come from the Nile above Cairo, whereas the calendar can be shown to have been discovered in the Delta, or at any rate not far south of it. The proof of this is very simple. Ancient authorities state that the day of the Julian Year on which the heliacal rising of Sirius was observed in Egypt was July 19th. Now astronomical considerations show that this could only be the case in or about the thirtieth degree of latitude, or, in other words, in the region of the modern Cairo. So here again we are brought face to face with the possibility that in the Delta there may have existed an earlier and more advanced predynastic civilization than in Upper Egypt, of whose remains we as yet know nothing.

It may reasonably be asked what evidence we have for supposing that the graves of the Early Predynastic Period, assigned to Sequence Date 30—40, represent the first appearance of man in the Nile valley subsequent to palaeolithic times. Seeing that practically all Egyptian cemeteries lie on the very edge of the cultivation, may there not be earlier predynastic cemeteries, formed before the Nile mud had reached its present limits, and therefore concealed beneath the cultivation? There is in itself no impossibility in this view, but it must be noticed that the position of the earliest tombs known to us shows that on the whole the limits of cultivation in Upper Egypt have altered but slightly in the last 5000 years at all events, and it would be somewhat unlikely that just before Sequence Date 30 some change should have occurred sufficient to overwhelm all earlier cemeteries. On the other hand, though cemetery after cemetery is discovered and fails to yield earlier material than that already known to us, we cannot assume that this will always be the case, and at any moment a fortunate discovery may take jus back another stage in the life-history of the predynastic Egyptian. In this connection the complete lack of evidence from the Delta should be most carefully kept in mind.

In any case, it is not at all certain that we have not already a group of remains which, while they cannot be called palaeolithic, are to be attributed to a date earlier than that of the first known tombs. For many years past natives have been accustomed to collect large numbers of finely-worked flints at certain sites in the west of the Fayyum, notably at Dimeh and Kom Ashim. It does not appear that any systematic excavation has ever been carried out on these sites, but the flints are said to be found on the surface unaccompanied by any other remains, e.g. pottery. These flints Petrie proposes to connect with those or the Solutrean phase of the European Palaeolithic Age, and thus to attribute them to an age preceding that of the earliest predynastic tombs, which he would equate with the Magdalenian. But, not to mention other difficulties, the mere fact that such flints occur in the Solutrean Period in Europe does not justify the belief that their date in Egypt is Solutrean, and, consequently, it is advisable to withhold judgment on this matter until such time as the Fayyum sites shall have been properly investigated.

HISTORICAL SLATE PALETTES      

Unfortunately the Egyptians have recorded practically nothing of any value with regard to the history of the Predynastic Period. There are three sources to which we can appeal, Manetho's History, the Turin Papyrus of Kings, and the Palermo Stone, together with the other fragments of the same or a similar monu­ment, lately discovered and now preserved in Cairo. Manetho, as quoted by Eusebius, records the following details with regard to the Predynastic Period: (1) A dynasty of gods, consisting of the Great Ennead of Heliopolis in the form in which it was wor­shipped at Memphis. (2) A further dynasty of gods, down to the time of Bidis, a space of 13,900 years. (This date includes both dynasties.) (3) Rule of a race of demigods, 1255 years. (4) Other kings, ruling for 1817 years. (5) After these another 30 kings from Memphis, 1790 years.(6) Ten kings from This, 350 years. (7) Kingdom. of departed spirits and demigods, 5813 years, upon which follows immediately the 1st Dynasty, headed by Menes.

From the historical point of view there is little to be made of this. .Moreover, the first two columns of the Turin Papyrus, which deal with the Predynastic Period, are in a lament­able condition. The king-list clearly began, however, with a dynasty of gods, which included Re, Geb, Osiris, Set, Horus, Thoth and Maat. Thereupon follow several totals of years, the connection of which is lost. We then read of 19 rulers from Mem­phis whose years are 11 and some months and days, while the next line records rulers (?) in the Delta (?) whose years are over 2100. Then, after an obscure reference to 7 women, we apparently find Spirits —the reading is not certain—Followers of Horus 13.420 plus x years. and after this “Total up to the Followers of Horus, 23,200 plus x years”. The next line brings us to Menes and the 1st Dynasty. In the papyrus, as in Manetho, we have dynasties of gods. Followers of Horus immediately preceding the 1st Dynasty, and between the two group of rulers from Memphis. For the scanty information furnished by the Palermo Stone, the only early Egyptian annals which have survived.

Despite the lack of definite contemporary records from the Predynastic Period it would seem that attempts were made to put on record historical events. Whatever may have been the original intention in the making and dedication of the archaic carved slate palettes there can be little doubt that some of them show us pic­torial representations of actual events. The most famous of them all is the palette of Narmer, and, whether we believe this king to be the Menes of later Egyptian tradition, or one of his immediate predecessors, it is believed by some to record an incident in the wars which ended in  the subjugation of the north by the south and the unification of the Two Egypts.  To the same period has been assigned, on grounds of style, the Louvre fragment, on each side of which is a bull worrying a prostrate human figure with prominent nose, apparently cuny hair, long square-cut beard, and naked except for the pudendal sheath. The two representations of walled towns on the reverse, and the standards on the obverse which end in hands holding a rope to which prisoners are attached, make it clear that the subject of these scenes was a war in which some person or tribe, who could be symbolically represented by a bull, defeated a tribe or nation whose features were as described above. A third palette, that which bears on its reverse the well-known giraffes flanking a palm-tree, has been assigned to the same period, though, if the stylistic argument is sound, one would perhaps expect it to be a little earlier. On the obverse of this we see numerous prisoners dead and alive. One is being devoured by a lion, perhaps symbolical, as was the bull; while another is being lead off by a figure—the upper part of which is unfortunately lost—clad in a long robe covered with a simple decorative pattern and ending in a fringe. The prisoners at first sight remind us of those in the last palette, for their hair is curly and they have rather square beards, in one case apparently shown as plaited. But it has been pointed out that these men are not wearing the pudendal sheath: what some writers have mistaken for this being simply an attempt on the part of the artist to depict a peculiar type of circumcision still practiced by certain east African tribes. It has also been made clear that the object which is partly visible in front of the led prisoner is not, as was generally supposed, a weight hung round his neck, but a primitive hieroglyphic writing of the defeated country, though unfortunately we cannot identify the place.       

Another fragment of a palette (now in Cairo) which is perhaps a little earlier than any of the above, tells a fairly clear story. On the obverse four horizontal registers are still left, containing respectively a row of oxen, one of asses, one of sheep, and a group of trees (identified as olive trees), together with a hieroglyphic group representing the country-name Libya. The whole quite clearly depicts the booty brought away from a successful campaign in Libya. On the reverse are seven walled cities, one of which is being destroyed by a hawk, another by a lion, another by a scorpion, and a fourth by two hawks on perches. The destroyers of the other three cities are lost. It is probable that in these animals we should see, not the totem animals of an invading tribe, but various symbolical representations of the king of Egypt.

Among still earlier palettes, which, to judge by their style, may with certainty be assigned to a predynastic date, two show nothing but animals and are of greater value to art than to history, while the other is quite clearly a hunting scene in which bearded men, apparently with curly hair, in which is stuck a feather, clad in pleated kilts with a wolf's (?) tail behind, and armed with bows and arrows, clubs, lassoes, spears and perhaps double axes, pursue lions and other animals.

Still more striking from the historical point of view is a carved ivory knife-handle (now in the Louvre Museum), said to have come from Gebel el-Arak in Upper Egypt, on the east bank of the Nile opposite Nag Hamadi (south of Girgeh). The fine ripple flaking and minutely toothed edge of the knife make it clear that the implement is to be dated back into the Predynastic Period. On one side of the handle we find what is clearly a scene of warfare. In the two top registers a series of single combats are represented between men armed with maces or knives and men totally un­armed, with the exception of one, who carries a flint knife. Both groups of men are clean-shaven and naked except for the pudendal sheath. The unarmed men have a long tress of hair hanging over the left shoulder; the armed men show no such tress, though it is advisable to remember that they are invariably seen in right profile, and may have had a tress on the left. Below these two registers arc two rows of boats separated by a heap of slain men. The boats in the upper of the two rows are totally different from those in the lower, and one can hardly resist the inference that the two types of boat belong respectively to the two groups of warriors. On the other side of the handle is what appears to be a hunting scene. At the top a human figure seen in left profile is supported heraldically by two lions. The appearance of the human figure can only be described as totally un-Egyptian. He wears a hemispherical cap with thick rolled brim—unless this is merely the coiffure——and a tunic reaching down to below the knees. He has full side-whiskers and a thick heavy beard. Below are dogs and various other animals, and a hunter whose body has almost disappeared. Another hunter, who should balance this one on the right, has been crowded out and is to be found on the other side of the handle. He differs in no respect from the armed warriors in the scenes of combat.

None can doubt that in the series of objects here described something of the history of predynastic times is written, yet so obscurely, in most cases, that the main result has been to puzzle us. There are, indeed, happy exceptions. One palette clearly records the result of a Libyan campaign of which we have perhaps another record in an ivory cylinder from Hieraconpolis on which Narmer, in the presence of the falcon-god and the vulture-goddess, smites a bearded people marked as Libyans. In the great Narmer palette, too, the main details and actors are fairly clear, whether or not we accept the conjecture that the defeated enemy were the Libyan inhabitants of the Harpoon nome in the north-western Delta. But of the rest of these scenes it is uncertain whether they represent mere local wars between tribe and tribe, or strife between Upper and Lower Egypt, or campaigns by kings of Upper or Lower Egypt, or both, against foreign foes. These are questions which we are hardly as yet in a position to answer. It has, however, been pointed out that in the human beings figured on these palettes we have to deal with more than one people. Thus, on the obverse of the giraffe-palette the defeated are men with curly hair, small beards and slight whiskers, coarse noses and slightly everted lips, who show a peculiar kind of circumcision. These are no true negroes, though they had obviously too much negro blood in their veins to be Egyptians and may have been Hamitic negroids. On the palette of Narmer the hair of the defeated is not curly, nor are their features negroid, yet one at least shows the same form of circumcision as the negroids just described. Both these conquered peoples have been assigned to the Hamitic stock, from which the predynastic Egyptians were themselves derived; and the negroid features of the one group may be explained on the supposition that they were a southern branch who had absorbed much negro blood by contact with the peoples of east Africa.

It must be left for the future to determine the relation between any of these three groups and the people wearing the pudendal sheath who are shown on each side of the Louvre fragment being gored by a bull, or the two peoples similarly clad on the knife handle, or the kilted hunters on the great hunting palette. Suffice it to notice that the pointed beard with slight side whisker and the pudendal sheath are both known from the tombs to have been characteristic of the predynastic Egyptian. Their wearers, therefore, must not be put down as foreigners, as they frequently are, on these grounds alone.

From what direction did predynastic man enter the Nile valley? Until quite lately two opposing theories concerning this question were in the field. According to one, predynastic Egypt was occupied by two peoples, not necessarily of different stock, and perhaps both akin to the Mediterranean race, one of whom occupied the Fayyum and the Nile valley as far south as Kawamil, near Suhag, at that time the northern limit of the known predynastic cemeteries, while the other was responsible for the predynastic remains which are found in such quantity from here southward, and which are thickest in the neighborhood of Coptos. This second people is supposed to have entered Egypt from the east by the Wadi Hammamat, and eventually to have conquered the race which occupied the lower Nile valley, thus founding United Egypt. According to the other theory, the predynastic population of the Nile valley was a single indigenous people, akin to the Mediterranean race; towards the end of the predynastic period a new race of different type entered the country by the Wadi Hammamat, coming from Arabia by the Straits of Bab el-Mandeb and Koseir. This race is supposed to be Semitic or 'Proto-Semitic' in origin, and to have brought with it the elements of proto-Babylonian culture, which enabled it to found the Dynastic Kingdom of Egypt.

ORIGINAL HOME OF EGYPTIANS     

Such were the two conflicting theories on the subject, for the theory of a southern origin has long been without a champion. During recent years we have gained a better knowledge of the physical type of the earliest Egyptians; and we now know that, so far from being strongly negroid and suggestive of a con­nection with the south, the physical type of the predynastic Egyptian differed little, if at all, from that of the great long-headed people whose various branches inhabited in neolithic times the Mediterranean basin and western Europe. Elliot Smith has gone further than this: he regards both the Semites of Arabia and the Sumerians as branches of this same race, which he calls the Brown Race, slightly differentiated from the Egyptians and from one another by long residence in a different environment. He is not prepared to discuss the original home of this race, but he believes that both Egyptians and Sumerians had been settled in their respective lands many generations before the date of the first of their graves known to us. In the case of Egypt this is a point on which there is some diversity of opinion, though this need not for the moment affect our belief in a relationship between the early Egyptian and his Arabian and Sumerian neighbors if we wish to do so. It should be noticed that the evidence of language, always, however, a most precarious guide, favors a common parentage for the Egyptian and the Semite of nearer Asia. The Egyptian language in its earliest known form shows important affinities with Semitic, which some authorities consider too radical to be explained away by the hypothesis of borrowing. Nor have we any reason for supposing that this was not the language used in predynastic times, during which the script, which we find in an advanced stage in the 1st Dynasty, was being slowly and painfully evolved in the Nile valley. On the other hand, the evidence of language does not confirm the belief that the Egyptian and Sumerian were of a common stock, though this is in itself no evidence against the truth of the belief.

Attacking the problem from the side of material civilization, we may say that for many years archaeologists have called attention to features in early Egyptian civilization which have their parallels in Mesopotamia and Elam. Thus, for instance, the occurrence of the cylinder-seal at an early date in Egypt and in Mesopotamia may be more than a coincidence. The style of the carved palettes with animals on them is most strikingly paralleled in Mesopotamia and in the countries bordering thereon. The lion-like animals with serpent necks seen on the palette of Narmer and on two of the earlier palettes are exactly paralleled on a Chaldean cylinder in the Louvre. Again, a close connection between the motifs of the palettes and knife-handles and those of ancient seals and cylinders from Elam has been observed, not so much in the similar types of various animals (lions, for instance), as in the general system of their grouping, partly round a certain centre, partly in continuous rows one over the other, the empty spaces sometimes being filled up with animals, sometimes with geometric or vegetable ornaments. The Gebel el-Arak knife-handle is an even more striking instance than any hitherto found. The figure of the man flanked by the two lions on the reverse might have come direct from a Mesopotamian monument, and it has been suggested that the figure is an Egyptian counterpart of the Babylonian Gilgamesh subduing the lions.

What conclusion is to be drawn from these admittedly striking analogies with the east? While many Egyptologists still prefer to hold their hands on the subject, Petrie has argued that a civiliza­tion developed in Elam much earlier than in Egypt, that its authors, or some of them, migrated from Susa to Egypt, with a long halt at some point on the way. They first reached Egypt early in the second prehistoric civilization, after Sequence Date 40, and continued to enter the country for some considerable time. The proof of the influx of this new element is to be seen, on this view, in the variations of the long bones of the skeletons found in graves of this period at Tarkhan, the newcomers being three or four inches shorter than the original Egyptians and temporarily shortening the stature of the country. These are the people who carved the knife-handle of Gebel el-Arak, the ancestors of the makers of the slate palettes, of Narmer and his people, and the founders of dynastic art. Whatever the value of this hypothesis, here it is only necessary to repeat that Petrie's theory of the priority of the Elamite civilization is based wholly on the occurrence in its early strata of supposed Solutrean flints, similar to those of the Fayyum, which he believes to be earlier than the first predynastic graves in Egypt. The cogency of this type of argument from Hint forms must, however, be regarded as doubtful m the extreme. As for the evidence of the bone measurements, the figures given by Petrie, if they can be supported by similar results from other sites, will indeed constitute a piece of evidence which must be very seriously reckoned with.

The indications which point in the direction of the east are certainly unmistakable. But it is a far call from recognizing the fact of these indications to furnishing their precise interpretation; and it is doubtful whether this can ever be done so long as the early civilization of the Delta remains a closed book to us. It must not be forgotten that certain striking parallels have been found between the cult-objects of the western Delta and those of early Crete. This suggests that the affinities of this early Delta civilization were with the Mediterranean rather than with Upper Egypt. But even here we are still in the realm of conjecture, and it is clear that nothing but excavation can place us on a higher plane. For the present almost every new object of any importance dating from these early times in Egypt merely serves to convince us, if we are wise, of the extent of our ignorance.