Ten years' digging in Egypt, 1881-1891

by W. M. Flinders Petrie

It might seem as if the researches described in these chapters were, though interesting in themselves, yet not of particular account in the wider view of human history and civilization. It is to focus together this new information, to show the results which flow from it, and to give a connected idea of our fresh light on the past, that this chapter is placed here. The application of scientific principles to archaeology, the opening of fresh methods of enquiry, and the rigorous notice of the period of everything found, have been as fruitful in the East as it has proved to be in the West.

In Egypt, the oldest condition of the present country that is known—the beginning of history as distinct from geology—is an age of great rainfall and denudation; succeeding to the geological age, in which the existing masses of surface gravels were laid down. This rain promoted vegetation, as in a previous age of which remains are seen in the various silicified forests, which occur where circumstances favoured their preservation. The amount of water falling on the country swelled the volume of the Nile to far beyond its greatest modern extent. Between the cliffs on either hand it ran certainly hundreds of feet higher than at present, probably in part as an estuary. The cliffs all along the Nile are worn by water running at a great height; and the débris brought down from the side valleys is piled up in hills at the mouths of the valleys, in a way that could only occur where they discharged into deep water. That the rain sufficed to fill up such a vast volume, we can believe, when we see the gorges cut back in the sides of the Nile cliffs by the lateral drainage. These often run back for some miles, ploughed out by receding waterfalls—small Niagaras—which have each left at the valley head their precipitous fall of polished rock, with a great basin below it hollowed by the force of the torrent. Such was the source of the power which has scoured out the whole Nile valley for a depth of over two hundred feet. High up on the hills between the Nile and the Fayum, the very crest of the hill is entirely of gravels and boulders, which can only have been deposited when there was a dead level at that height across the Nile valley. All the depths of the Nile below those hills have been scoured out by the rainfall and the torrent of the stream, some miles in width, and probably one to two hundred feet in depth. And the age of this is not merely geological and beyond human interests. Man was there at this time, as his rude flint implement, river-worn and rolled, high upon the hills, now shows us. (See [Chap. VI]. [Fig. 58].)

We come down an age later. The Nile had fallen to near its present level, but still filled its whole bed to perhaps fifty feet deep. Vegetation still grew on the hills; for we find traces of man at this time, and he must have lived on something. Where he lived we can guess by the flints which he fashioned, and which the heavy rains swept away down the valleys, and bedded in the shoals of débris in the reduced and shallow river. These flints are now to be picked out from the sides of later cuttings which the rain has made through its old river deposits, now high and dry in air; and it is at the mouth of the valley of the tombs of the kings at Thebes that these flints have been collected.

After that, we know nothing more of man until we find that the country was in its present state,—without any rainfall for practical purposes, the hills all barren desert, the Nile only filling the bottom of its old bed for a few months of the year, and meandering the rest of the time in a channel cut in its own mud, and man cultivating the old bed of the river when it is not overflowed. The civilization that we find before us in the earliest known history appears elaborate and perfect. After that, only slow changes of fashion and taste influenced it, and but few discoveries of importance were made during thousands of years which ensued. That this civilization was imported by an incoming race seems most probable; and the dynastic Egyptians found already in the country an aboriginal population, whose features, whose beliefs, and whose customs, differed much from their own. The two races had not yet amalgamated when we first come into their presence at Medum; but soon after that all signs of difference cease.

This earliest civilization was completely master of the arts of combined labour, of masonry, of sculpture, of metal-working, of turning, of carpentry, of pottery, of weaving, of dyeing, and other elements of a highly organized social life; and in some respects their work is quite the equal of any that has been done by mankind in later ages. Though simple, it is of extreme ability; and it is only in resources, and not in skill, that it has ever been surpassed. Certain products were then scarcely if at all known, and it is in the application of these that the civilization of later times shows a difference. No metal was used except copper, and hence flint was largely needed. And glass was probably unknown, although glazes were in use. But in most other respects the changes of later times are rather due to economy of production, and an increased demand for cheap imitations.

The work of the great period of the twelfth dynasty differs mainly in the freer use of writing, the greater quantity and poorer quality of the sculptures or paintings, and the introduction of glass and of glassy frits for colouring.

The next great period, the eighteenth to the nineteenth dynasty, is marked by the use of bronze, and the disappearance of flint tools. The art of glazing was much developed, and attained a brilliancy and variety of colouring, and a boldness of design, which was never again reached, unless perhaps by the mediaeval Orientals. But artistically the finest work of this age scarcely reaches the perfection of the sculpture and drawing which had already passed away.

The next serious change was the introduction of iron, of which there is no satisfactory evidence until about 800 B.C. Iron may have been known perhaps as a curiosity, just as one example of bronze occurs two thousand years before it came into actual use; but it had no effect on the arts. And shortly after came the Egyptian renascence, when the cycle of invention was run through, and the Egyptians were reduced to copying slavishly, and without the original spirit, the works of their ancestors. The Western influence became predominant, and importations instead of development govern the succeeding changes.

But it is rather in Europe than in Egypt that our interest centres. As no European literature remains to us older than the sixth or seventh century B.C. (except the oral poems), it has been too readily assumed that no civilization worthy of the name could have dwelt here, and that we are indebted to the East for all our skill. So far from this being the case it now seems that we must almost reverse the view. We have in the Egyptian records the accounts of a great European confederacy, which smote Egypt again and again,—Greece, Asia Minor, Italy, and Libya, all leagued together. We now know, from the objects found in Egypt, that these peoples were dwelling there as settlers so far back as 1400 B.C., if not indeed before 2000 B.C. From the chronology of the arts now ascertained, we can date the great civilization of Mykenae to about 1600 to 1000 B.C. (as I have stated in ‘Notes on Mykenae,’ Journal of Hellenic Studies, 1891); and we begin to see a great past rising before us, dumb, but full of meaning. Some of the metals were known in Europe before they appear in use in Egypt: the use of bronze is quite as old in the north as on the south of the Mediterranean; and the tin of Egypt probably came from the mines of Hungary and Saxony, which most likely supplied Europe at that time. Iron appears in use in Europe as soon as in Egypt. The best forms of tools are known in Italy two or three centuries before Egypt possessed them.

What then may be concluded as to Europe, from our present point of view? That Europe had an indigenous civilization, as independent of Egypt and Babylonia as was the indigenous Aryan civilization of India. That this civilization has acquired arts independently, just as much as India has, and that Europe has given to the East as much as it has borrowed from there. As early as 1600 B.C., it appears that a considerable civilization existed in Greece, which flourished in the succeeding centuries, especially in alliance with Libya. Probably it was already beginning in the period of the thirteenth dynasty, before 2000 B.C. By about 1400 B.C. a great proficiency in the arts is seen; elaborate metal-work and inlaying was made, influenced by Egyptian design, but neither made in Egypt, nor by Egyptians. Glazed pottery painted with designs was successfully made, and the arts of glazing and firing were mastered. And by 1100 B.C. this civilization was already decadent. Moreover this was not only in a corner of Europe; it had contact with the North as well as with Italy and Africa, and is at one with the culture of the bronze age, of which it is the crown and flower. Across Europe, from the Greek peninsula to the Baltic, this civilization stretches; and though in Greece it ripened to an early fall, and was destroyed by the barbaric Dorian invasion, it retained its hardy power in the North and in Italy. When we come down to about 800 B.C., we find that the arts stood high in Northern Italy. The requirements of the carpenters and joiners of that age had led them to invent the most perfect forms of chisels; and our mortising chisel and flat chisel with a tang have not received any improvement in the details of their form for 2700 years. The bronze age is the source of the objects we now use. Thence these types were carried into Egypt a couple of centuries later by the Greeks. When we descend further we see this independent culture of Europe prominent. The Saxons and Northmen did not borrow their weapons, their laws, or their thoughts from Greece or Italy. The Celts swamped the south of Europe at their pleasure; and, against the fullest development of Greek military science, they were yet able to penetrate far south and plunder Delphi. They were powerful enough to raid Italy right across the Etrurian territory. When we look further east, we see the Dacians with weapons and ornaments and dresses which belong to their own civilization, and were not borrowed from Greece. In short, Greece and Italy did not civilize Europe; they only headed the civilization for a brief period. And the Italian influence, which was much the more powerful, only lasted for a couple of centuries. From Caesar’s campaigns to the end of the Antonines is the whole time of Italian supremacy. After that there never was a Roman emperor, excepting a few ephemeral reigns. The centre of power and authority in Europe was in the Balkan peninsula. The emperors were mainly natives of that region; and the northern Holy Roman Empire of Germany has its roots practically in the third century. Civilization in Europe is, then, an independent growth, borrowing from, and lending to, the East. In the van of this group of races have come in turn Mykenaean Greece, then Etruria, Hellas, Rome, Dacia and Pannonia, the Lombards, and the Northmen; and each in turn have impressed their character on those peoples who were less advanced. Our common belief in the overshadowing importance of Rome in all our history is probably largely influenced by our literary history being derived from Roman sources, and this Italian view being fed for ecclesiastical purposes in the Middle Ages. In the broader view of the history of civilization in Europe, the spread of law and Latin in Southern Europe is perhaps Rome’s main result. But we must not forget that the Italian supremacy was quite as brief, if more potent, than that of other races who have led the way before and since.