and in the W. to Europe, as one of the distinctive features of the Neolithic Age there.
The effect of the discovery of a means of securing a certain food supply capable of being stored for use in the lean periods of the year not only led, for the first time in the world's history, to a settled community and a steady increase in population within the settlement, but in addition it gave men leisure to think of other things than the mere struggle for existence. It is no mere chance circumstance that the invention of agriculture is intimately related to the development of the potter's art, to the building of more pretentious houses, to the weaving of linen and the domestication of milk-giving cattle. But it also pro- vided the predisposing circumstances that compelled the organization of labour and the assumption of control of his fellow men by a leader who became a king, and brought about the curious result that the chief function of this earliest ruler was to be the irrigation engineer to the community, as we know to have been the case both in Egypt and Sumer. As this settled community in the Nile valley increased in numbers the necessity was forced upon it of making more ample provision for disposing of its dead; and out of the circumstances that attended these events there came into existence the arts of the embalmer, the carpenter and the stonemason. Architecture had its birth in the proto-Egyptian necropolis. Ship-building also was in- vented in close association with this train of events: and the first great maritime expeditions of which any hint has survived had for their object the obtaining of materials needed by the embalmer and the tomb-builder. Probably in the fourth millennium sea-going ships were already trafficking to Syria, Asia Minor and Crete, to southern Arabia and E. Africa (Elliot Smith, " Ancient Mariners," Journal of the Manchester Geo- graphical Society, 1017).
The Beginning of Civilization. After many years of fluctuat- ing diversities of opinion it is now widely admitted that there is a very close genetic relationship between the earliest civiliza- tions of Egypt and Babylonia. The identity of their burial customs, their methods of agriculture and irrigation, the use of bricks, cylinder seals and mace-heads, the use of copper and painted pottery, the weaving of linen and the choice and methods of preparing cosmetics, and above all their beliefs and religious practices -these and scores of other customs reveal the fact that the cultures of the earliest peoples of Egypt, Sumer and Elam were derived from a common source. The recent incident that compelled scholars frankly to admit the reality of the cul- tural link between Egypt and Babylonia in very early times was the acquisition by the Louvre of a predynastic flint-knife with a handle carved from the tooth of a hippopotamus which is said to have come from Gebel el-Arak near Nag'Hamadi in Upper Egypt (Benedite, " Le couteau de Gebel el-Arak," Fondation Eugene Piot, Man. et Mem., xxii., i., 1916). The de- sign engraved on the handle is claimed to be very un-Egyptian and to afford certain evidence of cultural contact with Sumer. But many scholars now claim that Egypt obtained the elements of her civilization from Sumer (see, for example, Prof. S. Lang- don, " Early Chronology of Sumer and Egypt," Nature, May 5 1921, p. 315)- In support of this contention Prof. Langdon claims that " recently discovered dynastic tablets establish the date of the earliest kingdoms of Mesopotamia as early as 5000 B.C."; whereas he attempts to fix the beginning of the first Egyptian dynasty by comparing the methods of year-dating of the famous Naram-Sin (2795-2739 B.C.) with those of Egypt, arguing that Naram-Sin borrowed his system of year-dating from Egypt and was contemporaneous with the last two kings of the second Egyptian dynasty. He claims to have confirmed the date circa 3200 B.C. for Menes. But a wholly unexpected revision of Egyptian dating has come from the German school of archaeology which was responsible for the minimal date 3200 B.C. which Prof. Langdon claims to have established by independent evidence.
Prof. L. Borchardt has recently set forth at length a series of arguments, mainly based on astronomical data, to prove that the first Egyptian dynasty began in 4186 B.C. and that the
sixth dynasty lasted from 2920 to 2720 B.C. (Die Annalen und die Festlegung des Allen Reiches der Agyptischen Geschichte, Berlin, 1919). This new estimate, even if it should prove to be true, would not necessarily be fatal to Langdon's claims. But there are reasons of other kinds that demonstrate the derivation of Sumerian and Elamite culture from Egypt.
If it can be shown that Egypt was the home of the invention of agriculture and irrigation, of the working of gold and copper, of the weaving of linen and the making of bricks, of the building of sea-going ships and the use of incense it necessarily follows that Sumer and Elam must have acquired these practices from Egypt, especially as Prof. Langdon rightly claims that the spread of culture took place mainly by sea-routes. As neither the Sumerians nor the Elamites are known to have built sea-going ships nor to have had any motives for doing so, one naturally assumes that the Egyptians (as the builders of the earliest known sea-going ships) took the initiative in opening up the communication by sea with the Persian Gulf, as we know they did with Crete and the coasts of Palestine, Syria and the Red Sea. But the facts brought to light by the French excavations in Elam seem to prove quite conclusively that the predynastic civilization of Egypt was planted there, probably by miners working the copper ore.
Perhaps the most valuable evidence bearing on the early inter-relationships of Egypt, Elam and Sumer and the wider spread of their cultural influence is afforded by the important study of early painted pottery, which M. Edmond Pettier contributed to the valuable series of reports of M. de Morgan's Delegation en Perse (" fitude Historique et Chronologique sur les Vases Peints de 1'Acropole de Suse," Memoires de la Delega- tion en Perse, Tome XIII. " Recherches Archeologiques," S&mt Serie, 1912, p. 27). According to him Susian ceramic ware is revealed as the product of a very primitive civilization; but in addition it recalls (or perhaps it would be more correct to say, reveals the germ of) certain highly perfected industries such as that of the Greeks. It is, in fact, an amazing mixture of in- experience and skill the sort of result one might expect to find when an industry which has been developed elsewhere is sud- denly transplanted to a new country, and work requiring special skill is unavoidably entrusted to the incompetent hands of local artisans. The Susian workmanship in fact displays clearly the fact of the derivation of the ceramic craft from elsewhere.
In the lowermost level in which there is any evidence of human occupation at Susa, pottery was found in association with copper and stone weapons. This suggests, according to Pettier (p. 60), that the pottery is Eneolithic and that the first colonization of Susa took place in the Eneolithic epoch. For in this lowest level the evidence of the arts and crafts indicates that a fully- developed civilization was present from the beginning of the Susian record preserved for us to study. Linen, for example, was found along with the weapons an association with copper and painted pottery which further strengthens the proof of the Egyptian origin of the imported Susian civilization. Neck- laces of lapis lazuli and turquoise afford evidence, according to Pettier (p. 61), of foreign relations. They suggest, in fact, the possibility of connexions with the regions around the southern end of the Caspian (13 and 14) where these stones are found and were worked in very early times. .
Discussing the date of these earliest Susian remains M. Pettier (p. 65) thinks that they are slightly earlier than any of the known Sumerian objects: but he is not inclined to accord them an age many centuries earlier than the time of Ur Nina of Lagash (2800 B.C.). It seems quite clear that there are no valid reasons for attributing to any Elamite or Sumerian re- mains a date earlier, if indeed as early, as that of the First Egyptian Dynasty. Now the proto-Egyptians had been working copper, making linen and painting pottery, for many centuries before this earliest possible date for the commencement of Elamite and Sumerian civilization. Hence, as undoubtedly borrowing did occur, it is clear that Elam and Sumer acquired the germs of their civilization directly or indirectly from Egypt, or from the same source as Egypt.
