volume 2 - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian History Workshop

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Predynastic Egyptian Antiquities.
for a moment, and I secured all that were offered to
me, and I told the sellers to collect everything of the
kind they could, and hold them for me until I returned.
Near Al-'Amrah I bought a group of large and heavy
flint slaughtering knives, and a very fine flint spear
head, 13J inches long.^ I have never seen larger or
finer specimens. We now know, thanks to de Morgan's
Recherches sur les Origines de VEgypte, Paris, 1896 and
1897, that all these flints came from the graves of the
predynastic Egyptians of the Neolithic Period. These
graves were discovered (like most things of value in Egypt)
by natives of Upper Egypt in 1889, and when they
applied to the Service of Antiquities for permission to
dig them out, it was refused. Until de Morgan himself
took the matter in hand, and began excavations near
Abydos, the Egyptian Government did nothing. When
the officials in Cairo saw the objects from these graves,
which the natives showed them, they declared them
to be " forgeries " and " modern imitations," and thus
many priceless antiquities of the Neolithic Period were
exported by the European dealers in Cairo, and were
lost to Egypt.
Going on to Kana, I renewed my acquaintance with
several dealers, and I found in the town Mr. Chauncey
Murch, who introduced me to several of the leading
Coptic families, from some of whom I acquired some very
interesting objects. Passing up the river by the west
bank, I saw at Nakadah many earthenware vessels and
flints, which the natives told me had been dug up in the
neighbourhood within the last two years. They were
of the same class as those which I bought near Al-'Amrah.
When I reached Western Thebes, the natives told me
that they had found some Coptic papyri near the ruins
of the old Coptic monastery at Der al-Bahari, and at
Madinat-Habu. As there was a great deal of clearing
to be done before we could reach the places where the
papyri were hidden, I made an arrangement with the men
who knew the sites to undertake this work on the under-
1 See Guide, to the Third and Fourth Egyptian Rooms, p. 58 ff.