We do not know whether Palaeolithic man in Egypt was contemporary with the cave-man of Europe.  We have no means of gauging the age of the Palaeolithic Egyptian weapons, as we have for the Neolithic period.  The historical (dynastic) period of Egyptian annals began with the unification of the kingdom under one head somewhere about 4500 B.C.  At that time copper as well as stone weapons were used, so that we may say that at the beginning of the historical age the Egyptians were living in the “Chalcolithic” period.  We can trace the use of copper back for a considerable period anterior to the beginning of the Ist Dynasty, so that we shall probably not be far wrong if we do not bring down the close of the purely Neolithic Age in Egypt—­the close of the Age of Stone, properly so called—­later than +5000 B.C.  How far back in the remote ages the transition period between the Palaeolithic and Neolithic Ages should be placed, it is utterly impossible to say.  The use of stone for weapons and implements continued in Egypt as late as the time of the XIIth Dynasty, about 2500-2000 B.C.  But these XIIth Dynasty stone implements show by their forms how late they are in the history of the Stone Age.  The axe heads, for instance, are in form imitations of the copper and bronze axe heads usual at that period; they are stone imitations of metal, instead of the originals on whose model the metal weapons were formed.  The flint implements of the XIIth Dynasty were a curious survival from long past ages.  After the time of the XIIth Dynasty stone was no longer used for tools or weapons, except for the sacred rite of making the first incision in the dead bodies before beginning the operations of embalming; for this purpose, as Herodotus tells us, an “Ethiopian stone” was used.  This was no doubt a knife of flint or chert, like those of the Neolithic ancestors of the Egyptians, and the continued use of a stone knife for this one purpose only is a very interesting instance of a ceremonial survival.  We may compare the wigs of British judges.

[Illustration:  014.jpg FLINT KNIFE]

We have no specimen of a flint knife which can definitely be asserted to have belonged to an embalmer, but of the archaistic flint weapons of the XIIth Dynasty we have several specimens.  They were found by Prof.  Petrie at the place named by him “Kahun,” the site of a XIIth Dynasty town built near the pyramid of King Usertsen (or Senusret) II at Illahun, at the mouth of the canal leading from the Nile valley into the oasis-province of the Payyum.  These Kahun flints, and others of probably the same period found by Mr. Seton-Karr at the very ancient flint works in the Wadi esh-Shekh, are of very coarse and poor workmanship as compared with the stone-knapping triumphs of the late Neolithic and early Chalcolithic periods.  The delicacy of the art had all been lost.  But the best flint knives of the early period—­dating to just a little before the time of the Ist Dynasty,