CONTENTS

Established by Edward L. Youmans

APPLETONS’
POPULAR SCIENCE
MONTHLY

EDITED BY
WILLIAM JAY YOUMANS

VOL. LVI
NOVEMBER, 1899, TO APRIL, 1900

NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1900

Copyright, 1900,
By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.

APPLETONS’
POPULAR SCIENCE
MONTHLY.

April, 1900.

RECENT YEARS OF EGYPTIAN EXPLORATION.
By W. M. FLINDERS PETRIE,
PROFESSOR OF EGYPTOLOGY, UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON.

Familiar as we are with the methods of science—exact observation and record, comparison, and the strict weeding out of hypotheses—yet such methods have only gradually been applied to various branches of learning.

Geometry became a science long ago, zoölogy much later, medicine only a generation or two ago, and the history of man is but just being developed into a science. What was done for other sciences by the pioneers of the past is now being done in the present day for archæology. We now have to devise methods, to form a notation for recording facts, and to begin to lay out our groundwork of knowledge. With very few exceptions, it may be said of Egypt that there is no publication of monuments before this century that is of the least use, no record or dating of objects before 1860, and no comparison or study of the history of classes of products before 1890. Thus, the work of recent years in Egyptology is really the history of the formation of a science.

The great stride that has been made in the last six years is the opening up of prehistoric Egypt, leading us back some two thousand years before the time of the pyramid builders. Till recently, nothing was known before the age of the finest art and the greatest buildings, and it was a familiar puzzle how such a grand civilization could have left no traces of its rise. This was only a case of blindness on the part of explorers. Upper Egypt teems with prehistoric remains, but, as most of what appears is dug up by plunderers for the market, until there is a demand for a class of objects, very little is seen of them. Now that the prehistoric has become fashionable, it is everywhere to be seen. The earlier diggers were dazzled by the polished colossi, the massive buildings, the brilliant sculptures of the well-known historic times, and they had no eyes for small graves, containing only a few jars or, at best, a flint knife.

The present position of the prehistory of Egypt is that we can now distinguish two separate cultures before the beginning of the Egyptian dynasties, and we can clearly trace a sequence of manufactures and art throughout long ages before the pyramid builders, or from say 6000 B. C., giving a continuous history of eight thousand years for man in Egypt. Continuous I say advisedly, for some of the prehistoric ways are those kept up to the present time.

In the earliest stage of this prehistoric culture metal was already used and pottery made. Why no ruder stages are found is perhaps explained by the fact that the alluvial deposits of the Nile do not seem to be much older than eight thousand years. The rate of deposit is well known—very closely one metre in a thousand years—and borings show only eight metres thick of Nile mud in the valley. Before that the country had enough rain to keep up the volume of the river, and it did not drop its mud. It must have run as a rapid stream through a barren land of sand and stones, which could not support any population except paleolithic hunters. With the further drying of the climate, the river lost so much velocity that its