THE FIRST PICTURES OF FIGHTING
The earliest representation of fighting, at the beginning of the prehistoric age, shows a man with long, wavy hair, spearing another man in the side. Later, are fighters on the Hierakonpolis tomb, using hooked sticks and clad in piebald hides of animals.
TOOLS. Tools of metal begin with small, square chisels of copper at S.D. 38. The intermediate examples have not been found till we reach a fine large chisel of copper at the close of the prehistoric. Adzes of copper [[p. 238]] begin at S.D. 56, or earlier, and increase in size down to historic times; they continued to be the favourite tool of the Egyptians for both wood and stone working until Greek times. Borers are usually tapered, to work in soft material. Needles of copper appear as early as S.D. 48, and the fastening pins of copper begin with the very earliest graves of S.D. 30.
Flint working was the greatest artistic industry of the prehistoric age. The surfaces were not merely reduced by haphazard flaking, but the flints were ground into form, and then reflaked in a marvellously regular manner with uniform parallel grooves [[page 238]]. The finishing of the edges by deep serrations of the fineness of forty to the inch, and the chipping out of delicate armlets of flint, show also the same astonishing skill and perfection of hand work. The Scandinavian flint chipping used to be regarded as the most perfect, but the Egyptian work entirely surpasses it in regularity and boldness.
STONE VASES. Hard stones were largely employed for making vases [[page 238]]. In the earlier age tall, cylindrical forms were used, and in the later age barrel forms. The earlier material was usually basalt, but syenite, porphyry, alabaster and limestone were also used. The later materials included slate, grey limestone, breccia, serpentine, and diorite. The hollowing out of these vases was by grinding, but the outside was entirely formed by chipping and polishing without rotary motion. The perfect regularity of the forms, and the fine taste shown in the curves of the outlines, as well as the hardness of the material, place the vase working higher than any work of the historic times.
1,000 Forms of Pottery
POTTERY. Pottery was greatly developed, although the wheel was not used, and all the forms were entirely modelled by hand and eye without mechanical guidance. The outlines are true and fine, the circularity is astonishingly regular, although all the trimming and polish runs vertically; and it was as easy in such a mode of building to make oval, doubled, or square forms, all of which are found. The specially later pottery is the decorated, with brown-red lines on a hard buff body. The forms are clearly copied from those of the stone vases; and the patterns are derived from the fossils and veins in the stone, or from the cordage net in which the vases were slung for carrying. Next appear aloes and other bushes, and figures of ships, which we have already noticed. Rows of ostriches and of hills are also favourite designs.
Other pottery of this ware, but not decorated, has a curious type of projecting ledge, wavy up and down, for handles. Beginning at S.D. 40 as a globular vessel, the type narrows to an upright jar; by S.D. 60 the handles dwindle, becoming united around it as a wavy band of pattern; by S.D. 70 the jar at last becomes a cylinder; by S.D. 75 the band becomes a mere line; and then after S.D. 80—in the first dynasty—the jar dwindles to a rough tube like a thumbstall. The contents of such jars similarly deteriorate. At first, perfumed ointment was put in them, then it was covered with a layer of mud to retain the scent; the mud increased until it was merely scented mud, then only plain mud was used, and lastly they were left empty. Beside many other forms of this hard ware there was also a long series of types in a rough brown pottery, which passed on into the ordinary pottery of the first dynasty. As there are over a thousand different forms of this prehistoric pottery known, and their study has been the key to the whole arrangement of that age, this subject is a very wide one, which we have barely noticed here.
PREHISTORIC POTTERY OF EGYPT