volume 2 - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian History Workshop

Pre-dynastic Egyptian Antiquities. 359
their interest. De Morgan was the first to prove that it
was made by the primitive inhabitants of Egypt, i.e.,
the predecessors of the d5mastic Egyptians, and he
promptly made extensive excavations at Al-'Amrah,
about three miles from Abydos, where his " finds " were
important. In 1895 and 1896 other excavators, chiefly
European, began to clear out the ruins of the pre-dynastic
settlements at Abydos, Tukh, Hierakonpolis, Gebelen
(Jabalen), etc., but they left several parts of them untouched,
and as soon as they ceased working the natives
set to work to finish the excavations on their own account.
Having contributed towards the expense of clearing
the cemeteries, I obtained from them large collections
of pre-d5mastic antiquities, viz., breccia bowls, stone
maceheads, knives, spear- and arrow-heads, scrapers,
digging tools, etc., in flint, models of animals, bone
figtures of women with inlaid eyes, fiat green schist
figures of animals, unpierced beads, toilet vases, etc.^
In the greater number of the tombs from which these
things came the human remains were much broken,
and generally speaking were not worth removing, for
they consisted chiefly of bones with neither flesh nor
skin on them. But I was anxious to obtain a complete
specimen of the pre-dynastic Egyptian, whether
sun-dried or mummified, for there was no example of
him in the British Museum. I went to site after site,
but everywhere I found that the bodies had been broken
in pieces, either by falling stones or sand, or by the
natives. I had almost given up all hope of getting
a complete human body when a native of Gebelen
(Jabalen) came to me saying that he wished me to come
and see some graves which he and his friends had found
at the foot of a hill near the old course of the western
arm of the Nile, which is now called " Bahr bila ma,"
i.e., the " waterless river. "^ He said that all the graves
contained pottery and large flints, and mummies. Most
• For the list and descriptions see the Guide to the Third and Fourih
Egyptian Rooms, pp. 46-50.
^ On this river see Schweinfurt:h in Petermann's Mittheilungen, 1879,
pp. 1-9-