necropoles and kitchen-middens of the predynastic people are to be found
in the districts of Abydos and Thebes, from el-Kawamil in the North to
el-Kab in the South. It is of course too soon to assert with confidence
that there are no prehistoric remains in any other part of Egypt,
especially in the long tract between the Fayyûm and the district of
Abydos, but up to the present time none have been found in this region.

This geographical distribution of the prehistoric remains fits in
curiously with the ancient legend concerning the origin of the ancestors
of the Egyptians in Upper Egypt, and supports the much discussed theory
that they came originally to the Nile valley from the shores of the Red
Sea by way of the Wadi Hammamat, which debouches on to the Nile in the
vicinity of Koptos and Kus, opposite Ballas and Tûkh. The supposition
seems a very probable one, and it may well be that the earliest
Egyptians entered the valley of the Nile by the route suggested and
then spread northwards and southwards in the valley. The fact that their
remains are not found north of el-Kawâmil nor south of el-Kab might
perhaps be explained by the supposition that, when they had extended
thus far north and south from their original place of arrival, they
passed from the primitive Neolithic condition to the more highly
developed copper-using culture of the period which immediately preceded
the establishment of the monarchy. The Neolithic weapons of the Fayyûm
and Hel-wân would then be the remains of a different people, which
inhabited the Delta and Middle Egypt in very early times. This people
may have been of Mediterranean stock, akin to the primitive inhabitants
of Palestine, Greece, Italy, and Spain; and they no doubt were identical
with the inhabitants of Lower Egypt who were overthrown and conquered by
Kha-sekhem and the other Southern founders of the monarchy (who belonged
to the race which had come from the Red Sea by the Wadi Hammamat), and
so were the ancestors of the later natives of Lower Egypt. Whether the