History of Egypt | Page 4

burnt black and patinated by ages of sunlight. We are taking one particular spot in the hills of Western Thebes as an example, but there are plenty of others, such as the Wadi esh-Sh��kh on the right bank of the Nile opposite Maghagha, whence Mr. H. Seton-Karr has brought back specimens of flint tools of all ages from the Palaeolithic to the Neolithic periods.
The Pal?olithic flint workshops on the Theban hills have been visited of late years by Mr. Seton-Karr, by Prof. Schweinfurth, Mr. Allen Sturge, and Dr. Blanckenhorn, by Mr. Portch, Mr. Ayrton, and Mr. Hall. The weapons illustrated here were found by Messrs. Hall and Ayrton, and are now preserved in the British Museum. Among these flints shown we notice two fine specimens of the pear-shaped type of St. Acheul, with curious adze-shaped implements of primitive type to left and right. Below, to the right, is a very primitive instrument of Chellean type, being merely a sharpened pebble. Above, to left and right, are two specimens of the curious half-moon-shaped instruments which are characteristic of the Theban flint field and are hardly known elsewhere. All have the beautiful brown patina, which only ages of sunburn can give. The "poignard" type to the left, at the bottom of the plate, is broken off short.
[Illustration: 008.jpg Palaeolithic Implements of the Quaternary Period. From the desert plateau and slopes west of Thebes.]
In the smaller illustration we see some remarkable types: two scrapers or knives with strongly marked "bulb of percussion" (the spot where the flint-knapper struck and from which the flakes flew off), a very regular coup-de-poing which looks almost like a large arrowhead, and on the right a much weathered and patinated scraper which must be of immemorial age.
[Illustration: 009.jpg (right): PALAEOLITHIC IMPLEMENTS. From Man, March, 1905.]
This came from the top plateau, not from the slopes (or subsidiary plateaus at the head of the wadis), as did the great St. Acheulian weapons. The circular object is very remarkable: it is the half of the ring of a "morpholith "(a round flinty accretion often found in the Theban limestone) which has been split, and the split (flat) side carefully bevelled. Several of these interesting objects have been found in conjunction with Pal?olithic implements at Thebes. No doubt the flints lie on the actual surface where they were made. No later water action has swept them away and covered them with gravel, no later human habitation has hidden them with successive deposits of soil, no gradual deposit of dust and rubbish has buried them deep. They lie as they were left in the far-away Pal?olithic Age, and they have lain there till taken away by the modern explorer.
But this is not the case with all the Pal?olithic flints of Thebes. In the year 1882 Maj.-Gen. Pitt-Rivers discovered Pal?olithic flints in the deposit of diluvial detritus which lies between the cultivation and the mountains on the west bank of the Nile opposite Luxor. Many of these are of the same type as those found on the surface of the mountain plateau which lies at the head of the great wadi of the Tombs of the Kings, while the diluvial deposit is at its mouth. The stuff of which the detritus is composed evidently came originally from the high plateau, and was washed down, with the flints, in ancient times.
This is quite conceivable, but how is it that the flints left behind on the plateau remain on the original ancient surface? How is it conceivable that if (on the old theory) these plateaus were in Pal?olithic days clothed with forest, the Pal?olithic flints could even in a single instance remain undisturbed from Pal?olithic times to the present day, when the forest in which they were made and the forest soil on which they reposed have entirely disappeared? If there were woods and forests On the heights, it would seem impossible that we should find, as we do, Pal?olithic implements lying in situ on the desert surface, around the actual manufactories where they were made. Yet if the constant rainfall and the vegetation of the Libyan desert area in Pal?olithic days is all a myth (as it most probably is), how came the embedded palaeoliths, found by Gen. Pitt-Rivers, in the bed of diluvial detritus which is apparently d��bris from the plateau brought down by the Pal?olithic wadi streams?
Water erosion has certainly formed the Theban wadis. But this water erosion was probably not that which would be the result of perennial streams flowing down from wooded heights, but of torrents like those of to-day, which fill the wadis once in three years or so after heavy rain, but repeated at much closer intervals. We may in fact suppose just so much difference in meteorological conditions as would make it possible for sudden rain-storms to occur