FOREIGN IMPORTS. Vessels of this large size certainly imply a corresponding importance of commerce. We have noted already the foreign imports into Egypt; and others imply more distinctly a sea intercourse. From S.D. 33 down to S.D. 68 there is found black pottery with incised basket-work patterns [[page 238]] filled in with white. It is always rare, only occurring in less than 1 per cent. of the graves, and in only one case was there more than a solitary example. It is entirely disconnected from the Egyptian types, but it is closely akin to pottery found on the north of the Mediterranean, in Spain (Ciempozuelos), in Bosnia, and in the earliest town of Troy. At the close of the prehistoric age the black pottery of the late Neolithic city of Knossos is found in the lowest levels of the temple at Abydos. And in the royal tombs of the first dynasty there many vases and pieces have been found which are clearly of the earliest age of painted Ægean pottery. Considering that the bulk of the trade must have been for perishable goods—oil and skins from Crete and Greece, corn and beans from Egypt—it is not to be expected that a great amount of breakable pottery would pass and be preserved in burials. There are, moreover, some tallies left to us besides the northern pottery. Throughout the later prehistoric age emery was regularly in use for all the grinding and polishing of stone vases and of carnelian beads; and so common that one excelsior spirit in search of a tour de force had even cut a vase out of block emery, as being the hardest known material. This emery, so far as we know, must have come from Smyrna. Again, the gold of the first dynasty contains a large amount of silver. This points to its source from the Pactolus region, where electrum was found, rather than from Nubia, where the gold is free from silver.
CONNECTION OF THE SHIPPING. When we look at the evidence of the ships themselves we see that it points to their having been used at sea rather than on the Nile. It is impossible to row a ship up against the Nile stream, which runs at three miles an hour, and sailing or towing is the only way to go southward in Egypt. But in only one instance is a ship with a sail represented, while there are many dozens of figures of rowing vessels. The galley has always been the type of business ship on the Mediterranean. All through the classical wars the rowing galley was the mainstay of power. The Homeric catalogue of ships, the Phœnician coinage, the Assyrian sculptures, the Greek fleets, the Carthaginian navy and its destroyers of Rome, the pirates of Liburnia and Lycia, down to the Venetian fleet and the French galleys of a couple of centuries ago, all show the dominance of the oar.
ARTICLES ILLUSTRATIVE OF THE EARLY CIVILISATION OF EGYPT
(1) Slate palettes on which paint for rubbing round the eyes was ground; (2) adze heads and harpoons, the harpoons at the sides being of bone, the others of copper; (3) beautifully flaked flint knife; (4) serpent amulet of stone; (5) maces of quartzose rock, very effective weapons; (6) forked lances of flint; (7) combs of ivory; (8) vases carved from hard stone; (9) black incised pottery, a foreign import into early Egypt.
LARGER IMAGE
Port Ensigns Carried
The nature of the standards upon poles carried by the ships has been variously interpreted. We can distinguish the elephant, bird on a crescent, and fish; the two or four pair of horns, the bush, and the branch; the rows of two, three, four, or five hills; the crossed arrows, and the harpoon, besides other forms which we cannot identify. The question is, what view will account for these most completely? Some have thought they were emblems of gods, and that the boats were sacred to divinities; but there are many which cannot be thus explained. Others have thought that they indicated tribes; but the rarity of repetitions, and the absence of any duplicates together, are against this. Marks of personal ownership have been suggested; and this is not impossible, as they might be well dedicated to special gods. But the prominence of the groups of hills as signs agrees best with their being marks of the ports from which they hailed; the divine emblems would naturally be those of the god of the port, the number of hills would be very likely to distinguish different ports, the elephant, the bush, or the fish might well be the mark of a port. And the parallel in later times of such being distinctive ensigns for ports—as in the ensign of Gades found in the Red Sea—agrees to this usage. The carrying of a port ensign in an age of independent city-states was equivalent to a national flag in later times; and it was essential for showing friends or foes.
We have dwelt at length on the detail of this shipping, as it is the most important subject for showing the extent and character of the early civilisation. It takes two to trade as well as to quarrel; and these large ships were not rowed about the Mediterranean unless there was a paying trade to be done on those coasts, a people civilised enough to produce goods that were wanted and to require foreign stuff in exchange, and a society stable enough to enable goods to be stocked in bulk and traded without any serious risk of fraud or force.
Ingenuity of the Hunters