to remain in many localities for indefinite periods, but they would
certainly become more or less 'patinated,' pitted on the surface, and
rounded at the angles after long exposure to heat, cold, and blown
sand." This is exactly the case of the Palæolithic flint tools from the
desert plateau.

[Illustration: 012.jpg UPPER DESERT PLATEAU, WHERE PALEOLITHIC
IMPLEMENTS ARE FOUND, Thebes: 1,400 leet above the Nile.]

We do not know whether Palæolithic man in Egypt was contemporary with
the cave-man of Europe. We have no means of gauging the age of the
Palæolithic Egyptian weapons, as we have for the Neolithic period.
The historical (dynastic) period of Egyptian annals began with the
unification of the kingdom under one head somewhere about 4500 B.C. At
that time copper as well as stone weapons were used, so that we may say
that at the beginning of the historical age the Egyptians were living
in the "Chalcolithic" period. We can trace the use of copper back for
a considerable period anterior to the beginning of the Ist Dynasty,
so that we shall probably not be far wrong if we do not bring down the
close of the purely Neolithic Age in Egypt--the close of the Age of
Stone, properly so called--later than +5000 B.C. How far back in the
remote ages the transition period between the Palæolithic and Neolithic
Ages should be placed, it is utterly impossible to say. The use of stone
for weapons and implements continued in Egypt as late as the time of
the XIIth Dynasty, about 2500-2000 B.C. But these XIIth Dynasty stone
implements show by their forms how late they are in the history of the
Stone Age. The axe heads, for instance, are in form imitations of
the copper and bronze axe heads usual at that period; they are stone
imitations of metal, instead of the originals on whose model the metal
weapons were formed. The flint implements of the XIIth Dynasty were