riking features of recent
Egyptology is the way in which the earliest ages of the civilization,
before the conventional Egyptian style was formed, have been illustrated
by the results of excavation. Until 1895 there seemed little hope of
reaching the records of those remote times, although it was plain that
the civilization had developed in the Nile valley for many centuries
before the IVth Dynasty, beyond which the earliest known monuments
scarcely reached. Since that year, however, there has been a steady flow
of discoveries in prehistoric and early historic cemeteries, and, partly
in consequence of this, monuments already known, such as the annals of
the Palermo stone, have been made articulate for the beginnings of
history in Egypt.

It is probable that certain rudely chipped flints, so-called eoliths, in
the alluvial gravels (formed generally at the mouth of wadis opening on
to the Nile) at Thebes and elsewhere, are the work of primitive man; but
it has been shown that such are produced also by natural forces in the
rush of torrents. On the surface of the desert, at the borders of the
valley, palaeolithic implements of well-defined form are not uncommon,
and bear the marks of a remote antiquity. In some cases they appear to
lie where they were chipped on the sites of flint factories. Geologists
and anthropologists are not yet agreed on the question whether the
climate and condition of the country have undergone large changes since
these implements were deposited. As yet none have been found in such
association with animal remains as would help in deciding their age, nor
have any implements been discovered in rock-shelters or in caves.

Of neolithic remains, arrowheads and other implements are found in some
numbers in the deserts. In the Fayum region, about the borders of the
ancient Lake of Moeris and beyond, they are particularly abundant and
interesting in their forms. But their age is uncertain; some may be
contemporary with the advanced culture of the XIIth Dynasty in the Nile
valley. Definite history on the other hand has been gained from the
wonderful series of "prehistoric" cemeteries excavated by J. de Morgan,
Petrie, Reisner and others on the desert edgings of the cultivated
alluvium. The succession of archaeological types revealed in them has
been tabulated by Petrie in his _Diospolis Parva_; and the detailed
publication of Reisner's unusually careful researches is bringing much
new light on the question