[67]Brunton, Mostagedda (London, 1937), 67; Sir Robert Mond and O. H. Myers, Cemeteries of Armant, I, 7.
[68]Amratian is called “Early or First Predynastic” or “Naqada I” in the older literature.
[69]Frankfort, Kingship and the Gods (Chicago, 1948), 348, n. 4, and Index, Africa, Hamites. Badarian objects have been found, not only in Middle and Upper Egypt (at Badari, Mahasna, Naqada, Armant, and Hierakonpolis—see Brunton in Antiquity, III [1929], 461), but in Nubia (Brunton, The Badarian Civilization [London, 1928], 40), in the northern provinces of the Sudan (report of the discoveries of Mr. Oliver Myers of Gordon College, Khartoum, in The Times [London] of March 31, 1948), in the desert fifty miles west of the Nile in the latitude of Abydos (Man, No. 91 [1931]), and again far to the south, four hundred miles west of the Nile in the latitude of Wadi Halfa (Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, XXII [1936], 47-8).
[70]Also called “Naqada II” or “Middle Predynastic.” Note that “Late Predynastic” or “Semainean” has been proved a chimera. The remains so labelled belong to the Gerzean period, which thus leads right up to the First Dynasty. See Helene J. Kantor, in Journal of Near Eastern Studies, III (1944), 110-46. When we use “late Predynastic” we mean the last part of the predynastic period, in other words, late Gerzean.
[71]A. Lucas, in Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, XVI (1930), 200 ff.
[72]Nature, XII (October 1932), 625; Lucas in Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, XIII (1927), 162-70; XIV (1928), 97-108.
[73]The Egyptian language has been explained as a common tongue imposed upon a country where several dialects existed, in the same manner as the French of Ile de France became the official French language, and “Hochdeutsch” the vehicle of communication for all Germans. Now this ancient Egyptian language included two recognizable Hamitic strains—one Southern or Ethiopian, the other Western or Berber—and also one Semitic strain (see the studies of Ernst Zyhlarz in Africa, IX [London, 1936], 433-52; Zeitschrift fur Eingeborenensprachen, XXIII [1932-3], 1 ff.; XXV [1934-5], 161 ff.).
[74]It would be possible to assume that the Semitic elements entered through the Wadi Hammamat from the Red Sea, but this leaves the Gerzean innovations unexplained and ignores the arguments put forward by K. Sethe, “Die Aegyptische Ausdrücke für rechts und links und die Hieroglyphenzeichen für Westen und Osten,” in Nachrichten von der Königlichen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, Phil.-Hist. Kl., 1922, 197-242.
[75]It even affected the physical type of the population; see G. M. Morant, “Study of Egyptian Craniology from Prehistoric to Roman Times,” in Biometrika, XVII (1925), 1-52.
[76]Brunton, The Badarian Civilization, 48. The assumption finds strong support in the tradition that Menes, the first king of the First Dynasty, reclaimed all the land from Wasta to Cairo before he founded Memphis at the north end of the strip so reclaimed. Such an enterprise presupposes some established skill in work of that nature.