Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 37.djvu/605

Rh of modern times into the conviction that all these things were the result of a steady progress through long epochs. On a similar plan, Mr. Southall proposed, at the very beginning of his book, as a final solution of the problem, the declaration that Egypt, with its high civilization in the time of Mena, with its races, classes, institutions, arrangements, language, monuments—all indicating an evolution through a vast previous history—was a sudden creation which came fully made from the hands of the Creator. To use his own words, "The Egyptians had no stone age, and were born civilized."

There is an old story that once on a time a certain jovial King of France, making a progress through his kingdom, was received at the gates of a provincial town by the mayor's deputy, who began his speech on this wise: "May it please your Majesty, there are just thirteen reasons why his honor the mayor can not be present to welcome you this morning. The first of these reasons is that he is dead." On this the king graciously declared that this first reason was sufficient, and that he would not trouble the mayor's deputy for the twelve others.

So with Mr. Southall's argument: one simple result of scientific research out of many is all that it is needful to state, and this is, that in these later years we have a new and convincing evidence of the existence of prehistoric man in Egypt in his earliest, rudest beginnings—the very same evidence which we find in all other parts of the world which have been carefully examined. This evidence consists of stone implements which have been found in Egypt in such forms, at such points, and in such positions that when studied in connection with those found in all other parts of the world, from New Jersey to California, from France to India, and from England to the Andaman Islands, they force upon us the conviction that civilization in Egypt, as in all other parts of the world, was developed by the same slow process of evolution from the rudest beginnings.

It is true that men learned in Egyptology had discouraged the idea of an earlier stone age in Egypt, and that among these were Lepsius and Brugsch; but these men were not trained in prehistoric archæology; their devotion to the study of the monuments of Egyptian civilization had evidently drawn them away from sympathy, and indeed from acquaintance with the work of men like Boucher de Perthes, Lartet, Nilsson, Troyon, and Dawkins. But a new era was beginning: in 1867 Worsaae called attention to the prehistoric implements found on the borders of Egypt; two years later Arcelin discussed such stone implements found beneath the soil of Sakkara and Ghizeh, the very focus of the earliest Egyptian civilization; in the same year Hamy and Lenormant found such implements washed out from