PREHISTORIC EGYPT (as of approx 1900)

The conception of the beginnings of Egyptian antiquity was profoundly altered in the early 1900‘s. When Prof. Maspero published the first volume of his great _Histoire Ancienne des Peuples des l'Orient Classique_, in 1895, Egyptian history, properly so called, still began with the Pyramid-builders, Sne-feru, Khufu, and Khafra (Cheops and Chephren), and the legendary lists of earlier kings preserved at Abydos and Sakkara were still quoted as the only source of knowledge of the time before the IVth Dynasty. Of a prehistoric Egypt nothing was known, beyond a few flint flakes gathered here and there upon the desert plateaus, which might or might not tell of an age when the ancestors of the Pyramid-builders knew only the stone tools and weapons of the primeval savage.

Now, however, the veil which has hidden the beginnings of Egyptian
civilization from us has been lifted, and we see things, more or less,
as they actually were, unobscured by the traditions of a later day.
Until the last few years nothing of the real beginnings of history in
either Egypt or Mesopotamia had been found; legend supplied the only
material for the reconstruction of the earliest history of the oldest
civilized nations of the globe. Nor was it seriously supposed that any
relics of prehistoric Egypt or Mesopotamia ever would be found. The
antiquity of the known history of these countries already appeared
so great that nobody took into consideration the possibility of our
discovering a prehistoric Egypt or Mesopotamia; the idea was too remote
from practical work. And further, civilization in these countries had
lasted so long that it seemed more than probable that all traces
of their prehistoric age had long since been swept away. Yet the
possibility, which seemed hardly worth a moment's consideration in 1895,
is in 1905 an assured reality, at least as far as Egypt is concerned.
Prehistoric Babylonia has yet to be discovered. It is true, for example,
that at Mukay-yar, the site of ancient Ur of the Chaldees, burials
in earthenware coffins, in which the skeletons lie in the doubled-up
position characteristic of Neolithic interments, have been found; but
there is no doubt whatever that these are burials of a much later date,
belonging, quite possibly, to the Parthian period. Nothing that may
rightfully be termed prehistoric has yet been found in the Euphrates
valley, whereas in Egypt prehistoric antiquities are now almost as well
known and as well represented in our museums as are the prehistoric
antiquities of Europe and America.

With the exception of a few palasoliths from the surface of the Syrian
desert, near the Euphrates valley, not a single implement of the Age
of Stone has yet been found in Southern Mesopotamia, whereas Egypt
has yielded to us the most perfect examples of the flint-knapper's
art known, flint tools and weapons more beautiful than the finest that
Europe and America can show. The reason is not far to seek. Southern
Mesopotamia is an alluvial country, and the ancient cities, which
doubtless mark the sites of the oldest settlements in the land, are
situated in the alluvial marshy plain between the Tigris and the
Euphrates; so that all traces of the Neolithic culture of the country
would seem to have disappeared, buried deep beneath city-mounds, clay
and marsh. It is the same in the Egyptian Delta, a similar country; and
here no traces of the prehistoric culture of Egypt have been found. The
attempt to find them was made last year at Buto, which is known to be
one of the most antique centres of civilization, and probably was one of
the earliest settlements in Egypt, but without success. The infiltration
of water had made excavation impossible and had no doubt destroyed
everything belonging to the most ancient settlement. It is not going too
far to predict that exactly the same thing will be found by any explorer
who tries to discover a Neolithic stratum beneath a city-mound of
Babylonia. There is little hope that prehistoric Chald?a will ever be
known to us. But in Egypt the conditions are different. The Delta is
like Babylonia, it is true; but in the Upper Nile valley the river flows
down with but a thin border of alluvial land on either side, through the
rocky and hilly desert, the dry Sahara, where rain falls but once in two
or three years. Antiquities buried in this soil in the most remote
ages are preserved intact as they were first interred, until the modern
investigator comes along to look for them. And it is on the desert
margin of the valley that the remains of prehistoric Egypt have been
found. That is the reason for their perfect preservation till our own
day, and why we know prehistoric Egypt so well.

The chief work of Egyptian civilization was the proper irrigation of
the alluvial soil, the turning of marsh into cultivated fields, and the
reclamation of land from the desert for the purposes of agriculture.
Owing to the rainless character of the country, the only means
of obtaining water for the crops is by irrigation, and where the
fertilizing Nile water cannot be taken by means of canals, there
cultivation ends and the desert begins. Before Egyptian civilization,
properly so called, began, the valley was a great marsh through which
the Nile found its way north to the sea. The half-savage, stone-using
ancestors of the civilized Egyptians hunted wild fowl, crocodiles,
and hippopotami in the marshy valley; but except in a few isolated
settlements on convenient mounds here and there (the forerunners of the
later villages), they did not live there. Their settlements were on
the dry desert margin, and it was here, upon low tongues of desert hill
jutting out into the plain, that they buried their dead. Their simple
shallow graves were safe from the flood, and, but for the depredations
of jackals and hyenas, here they have remained intact till our own
day, and have yielded up to us the facts from which we have derived our
knowledge of prehistoric Egypt. Thus it is that we know so much of the
Egyptians of the Stone Age, while of their contemporaries in Mesopotamia
we know nothing, nor is anything further likely to be discovered.