of those ancient Pharaohs, though removed from them by fifty centuries.

[Illustration: 062.jpg A FELLAH WOMAN WITH THE FEATURES OF AN ANCIENT
KING. 1]

1 The face of the woman here given was taken separately,
and was subsequently attached to the figure of an Egyptian
woman whom Naville had photographed sitting beside a
colossal head. The nose of the statue has been restored.

Until quite recently nothing, or all but nothing, had been discovered
which could be attributed to the primitive races of Egypt: even the
flint weapons and implements which had been found in various places
could not be ascribed to them with any degree of certainty, for the
Egyptians continued to use stone long after metal was known to them.
They made stone arrowheads, hammers, and knives, not only in the time of
the Pharaohs, but under the Romans, and during the whole period of
the Middle Ages, and the manufacture of them has not yet entirely died
out.[**]

** An entire collection of flint tools--axes, adzes,
knives, and sickles--mostly with wooden handles, were found
by Prof. Petrie in the ruins of Kahun, at the entrance to
the Fayum: these go back to the time of the twelfth dynasty,
more than three thousand years before our era. Mariette had
previously pointed out to the learned world the fact that a
Coptic _Reis_, Salib of Abydos, in charge of the
excavations, shaved his head with a flint knife, according
to the custom of his youth (1820-35). I knew the man, who
died at over eighty years of age in 1887; he was still
faithful to his flint implement, while his sons and the
whole population of El Kharbeh were using nothing but steel
razors. As his scalp was scraped nearly raw by the
operation, he used to cover his head with fresh leaves to
cool the inflamed skin.

These objects, and the workshops where they were made, might therefore
be less ancient than the greater part of the inscribed monuments. But if
so far we had found no examples of any work belonging to the first ages,
we met in historic times with certain customs which were out of harmony
with the general civilization of the period. A comparison of these
customs with analogous practices of barbarous nations threw light upon
the former, completed their meaning, and showed us at the same time the
successive stages through which the Egyptian people had to pass before
reaching their highes