ARCH, JOSEPH (1826-1919), British labour leader (see 2.342), died at Barford, Warwick, Feb. 12 1919.
ARCHAEOLOGY: EGYPT AND WESTERN ASIA. During 1910-
20 advances in Egyptian archaeological knowledge were sure if
slow. Of course, generally speaking, less advance was made than
in many previous decades, owing to the interregnum caused by
the World War, when all British, French, German, and Austrian
work was held up, and only the Americans and to a lesser degree
the so-called " Egyptian " Service of Antiquities (manned by
French and English) did any digging at all; while in all the Eu-
ropean countries the energies of all the archaeologists who were
not superannuated were transferred to the field of war, and
there was no time left to write little papers, still less big books.
And several, especially in France and Germany, made the
great sacrifice which summarily closed lives and extinguished
brains of great value to science. Nevertheless, advance was made.
In the years immediately preceding the war we have to chronicle first a great advance in our knowledge of the begin- nings of Egyptian history, owing mainly to the excavations of Prof. Flinders Petrie at Tarkhan * and of the German, Prof. Junker (working for Austria), at Tura. 2 Both these places are in Middle Egypt, well N. ; the former being near Kafr 'Ammar and the other just S. of Cairo, on the way to Helwan. The point of interest is that their diggings have shown that the Horus kings of Upper Egypt had under the " Scorpion King " (who is not the same person as Narmer or Narmerza, as we now must call him) extended their rule as far as the apex of the Delta, N. of Cairo. The Delta was presumably still independent, and was conquered by Narmerza. A point of importance as to the pre- historic period was scored by the discovery in the same neigh- bourhood at Gerzeh by Mr. Wainwright of iron beads on a necklace. 3 Now as these beads are admittedly worked metallic iron and must date before 4000 B.C., it is obvious that they are a remarkable confirmation of those who, like the present writer, have in opposition to Prof. Montelius always maintained that iron was known to and occasionally used in a worked state by the Egyptians at a period long anterior to its general intro- duction and replacing of bronze for weapons and tools. 4 The Old Kingdom finds of iron are now seen to be nothing very extraordinary. But equally it is now impossible to cast any doubt upon them. The oldest iron weapon known was hitherto sup- posed to be an Egyptian halbert-head of the lime of Rameses III., but Mr. Randall Maclver has recently discovered in a tomb of the XII. dynasty at the Second Cataract an iron spearhead which is eight centuries older; dating from about 2000 B.C. 6 Iron was in fact both worked and used sporadically long before the " Iron Age."
Interesting conclusions as to the early ethnology of Egypt have been derived from the systematic examination of the necropolises of Nubia, necessitated by the heightening of the Aswan dam, as a consequence of which the northern portion of the valley S. of the dam became flooded, so that a complete examination of the archaeology of the district had to be carried out in order to save historical evidence from destruction. The results published in the Archaeological Survey of Nubia 6 by Messrs. Reisner & Firth have shown that the early culture of Nubia was closely akin to that of the predynastic Egyptians, which no doubt came from the south. After Egypt proper was overrun by the " dynastic Egyptian " people of " Armenoid " stock, who came from Asia and founded the kingdoms of Lower and Upper Egypt, the old barbarous Nilotic culture continued to exist in Nubia. We find an illustration of this in the fact that a red and black pottery, obviously akin to the predynastic Egyptian, but of finer make, was manufactured in Nubia in the time of the XII. dynasty, and introduced into Egypt by Nubian colonists, perhaps soldiers or enslaved prisoners, who preserved also their own native (and really old Egyptian) burial customs, interring their dead in " pan " graves much resembling those of the primitive Egyptians of two and three thousand years before.
Evidence is accumulating, though no completely satisfactory theory can yet be put forward, as to the northern origin of the
dynastic Egyptians. Elliot Smith has shown 7 the existence of the two racial stocks in Egypt, the predynastic Nilotic and the invading " Armenoid " from Asia, the man of higher cranial capacity to whom the blossoming of the Egyptian civilization and art out of primitive African barbarism is to be ascribed. This " Armenoid " stock must have come from Asia and, no doubt, reached Egypt by the Isthmus of Suez, but whence it came originally we do not know. Whether it was really Semitic we also do not know: whatever its skull may be its facial type is certainly not Semitic, whether of the fine pure Arab or the coarse big-nosed " Hethitized " types. It is sometimes almost central European in look.
How to equate this foreign civilizing race from Asia with ths Semitic elements in the ancient Egyptian speech we do not yet know. It may be that these belong in reality to the old Nilotic inhabitants, who were probably related to the true Semites of Arabia; but the hieroglyphic system seems to have developed in the Delta, and is very probably to be ascribed to the " Arme- noids." The Osiris cycle of legends seems to belong to these people. Osiris and Isis are closely connected with Syria and the Lebanon in legend; the Ded or sacred pillar of Osiris is doubtless really a representation of a great cedar with its horizontally outspreading branches; 8 another of the sacred Egyptian trees is obviously a cypress; corn and wine are traditionally associated with Osiris, and .it is probable that corn and wine were first domesticated in Syria, and came thence with the gods Osiris and Re (the sun god of Heliopolis) into the Delta. Syria in fact is beginning to take shape in our minds as perhaps the most ancient seat of civilization in the world, the common source from which Babylonia and Egypt derived those items of culture in which, in the early period, they resemble one another. It remains for excavation to show whether this hypothesis is or is not correct. And the question whether the " Armenoid " conquerors of Egypt and founders of the kingdoms there, who came from Syria, were Semites still remains unanswered. If they were Semitic speakers, the present facial contours of the northern Semites, which have spread all over the world, are not Semitic at all: for the Egyptian Armenoids in the statues of the Old Kingdom look like Europeans, and must have been of " European " blood.
These new probabilities open up considerable possibilities in research with regard to the relations of the early Minoans and other Aegeans with Syria and Egypt and the undoubted fact of the resemblances of Minoan on the one hand to Syrian and Egyptian religions 'and funerary practices, and on the other hand to those of the Etruscans.
The facial contours of the modern Jew are predominantly those of the ancient Hittite, who was certainly not a Semite. One has hitherto supposed that he was related to the Medi- terraneans, the race to which the Bronze Age Greeks and Italians belonged; but this supposed connexion may well break down in the matter of skull form, as the Hittite skull, like that of the modern Anatolian, probably inclined to be brachycephalic. whereas that of the Mediterranean inclined in the other direction, And now the Bohemian Assyriologist Prof. Hrozny has brought forward evidence 9 that the cuneiform script, adopted by the Hittites from the Mesopotamians expressed an Indo-European tongue, nearly akin to Latin! This conclusion is not yet uni- versally accepted, but it seems difficult on the evidence to avoid the conclusion that Prof. Hrozny is right, and if so the curious resemblances of some of the externals of Roman and Hittite religion, and the legendary and other connexions between the Etruscans and Asia Minor, are seen in a new light.
If the Hittites were Aryans, one can hardly suppose a primeval Aryan element in Anatolia. The Indo-Europeans whom we find in Mesopotamia (the Kassites and Mitannians) * and in Palestine about 1400 B.C. can hardly have entered western Asia before 2000 B.C. or thereabouts, and it is probable that the Hittites belonged to the same wandering. On entering
- The fact that the Mitannians venerated Varuna, Indra, and the
Asvins is important as showing that Iranian and Indian Aryans had not yet separated as late as 1400 B.C.
