o
El Kab, I observed again the same mixture of Old Kingdom and Libyan
pottery near a group of mastabas.

17. To this evidence must be added some considerations about the first
cemetery of Naqada and Ballas, which were felt by us from the
beginning as difficulties in the way of accepting the later dating to
the VII-X dynasty.

The entire absence of distinctly Egyptian objects from so large a
series of tombs, and even from the villages of the same period, was
difficult to explain on the supposition that the Egyptians were
already in the land.

The Libyans, too, as lovers of fine pottery, would surely have learnt
the use of the wheel from the Egyptians, if they had come in contact
with them at all; yet all the Libyan pottery (with the rarest
exceptions) is handmade.

The Libyans habitually placed green paint among the other toilet
articles buried near the head. The Egyptians of the early Old Empire
are sometimes represented with green paint upon the face. It is more
natural to suppose that this was a fashion inherited from the
praedynastic times, than to suppose that so peculiar a mode of
ornamentation was practised at two independent periods in the history
of the country.

Lastly, there is the negative evidence from the mound of Nubt. Here
Dr. Petrie found on the surface walls of the XVIIIth dynasty, with
inscriptions and dated pottery; below them walls of the XIIth dynasty,
with pottery again, and lower still, walls and layers of pottery of
the Old Kingdom. But between these last two, no scrap of the Libyan
pottery occurred, though a Libyan town lay but a quarter of a mile
away.

On an examination, then, of the whole evidence from our two cemeteries
of Naqada and El Kab, I came to the conclusion that our first dating
had been not early enough, that the latest type of tomb at Naqada
was contemporary with the mastabas of the Old Empire, and that the
earliest type (characterised by dissevered skeletons, very fine flint
knives, great quantities of ashes, and a small number of red and black
pots of good quality) must be attributed to a much earlier period.

Since then much more information has come to light. M. de Morgan's
second volume of "Recherches sur les Origines de l'Egypte" contains a
summary of the discoveries made by M. Amelineau at Abydos, together
with an account of the great royal tomb found by M. de Morgan himself
at Naqada. M. Amelineau's finds are recognised as being chiefly of the
first three dynast