This hypothetically chronological classification is, as has been said, due to Prof.  Petrie, and has been adopted by Mr. Randall-Maclver and other students of prehistoric Egypt in their work. [*_El Amra and Abydos_, Egypt Exploration Fund, 1902.] To Prof.  Petrie then is due the credit of systematizing the study of Egyptian prehistoric antiquities; but the further credit of having discovered these antiquities themselves and settled their date belongs not to him but to the distinguished French archaeologist, M. J. de Morgan, who was for several years director of the museum at Giza, and is now chief of the French archaeological delegation in Persia, which has made of late years so many important discoveries.  The proof of the prehistoric date of this class of antiquities was given, not by Prof.  Petrie after his excavations at Dendera in 1897-8, but by M. de Morgan in his volume, Recherches sur les Origines de l’Egypte:  l’Age de la Pierre et les Metaux, published in 1895-6.  In this book the true chronological position of the prehistoric antiquities was pointed out, and the existence of an Egyptian Stone Age finally decided.  M. de Morgan’s work was based on careful study of the results of excavations carried on for several years by the Egyptian government in various parts of Egypt, in the course of which a large number of cemeteries of the primitive type had been discovered.  It was soon evident to M. de Morgan that these primitive graves, with their unusual pottery and flint implements, could be nothing less than the tombs of the prehistoric Egyptians, the Egyptians of the Stone Age.

Objects of the prehistoric period had been known to the museums for many years previously, but owing to the uncertainty of their provenance and the absence of knowledge of the existence of the primitive cemeteries, no scientific conclusions had been arrived at with regard to them; and it was not till the publication of M. de Morgan’s book that they were recognized and classified as prehistoric.  The necropoles investigated by M. de Morgan and his assistants extended from Kawamil in the north, about twenty miles north of Abydos, to Edfu in the south.  The chief cemeteries between these two points were those of Bat Allam, Saghel el-Baglieh, el-’Amra, Nakada, Tukh, and Gebelen.  All the burials were of simple type, analogous to those of the Neolithic races in the rest of the world.  In a shallow, oval grave, excavated often but a few inches below the surface of the soil, lay the body, cramped up with the knees to the chin, sometimes in a rough box of pottery, more often with only a mat to cover it.  Ready to the hand of the dead man were his flint weapons and tools, and the usual red and black, or buff and red, pots lay beside him; originally, no doubt, they had been filled with the funeral meats, to sustain the ghost in the next world.  Occasionally a simple copper weapon was found.  With the body were also buried slate palettes for grinding the green