since its capital is situated so near to the seacoast, may have owed
its origin to oversea Mediterranean connections. There is much in
the political constitution of later Egypt which seems to have been of
indigenous and pre-Semitic origin. Especially does this seem to be so in
the case of the division and organization of the country into nomes. It
is obvious that so soon as agriculture began to be practised on a large
scale, boundaries would be formed, and in the unique conditions of
Egypt, where all boundaries disappear beneath the inundation every
year, it is evident that the fixing of division-lines as permanently as
possible by means of landmarks was early essayed. We can therefore with
confidence assign the formation of the nomes to very early times. Now
the names of the nomes and the symbols or emblems by which they were
distinguished are of very great interest in this connection. They are
nearly all figures of the magic animals of the primitive religion, and
fetish-emblems of the older deities. The names are, in fact, those of
the territories of the Neolithic Egyptian tribes, and their emblems are
those of the protecting tribal demons. The political divisions of the
country seem, then, to be of extremely ancient origin, and if the nomes
go back to a time before the Semitic invasions, so may also the kingdoms
of the South and North.

Of these predynastic kingdoms we know very little, except from legendary
sources. The Northerners who were conquered by Aha, Narmer, and
Khâsekhehiui do not look very much like Egyptians, but rather resemble
Semites or Libyans. On the "Stele of Palermo," a chronicle of early
kings inscribed in the period of the Vth Dynasty, we have a list of
early kings of the North,--Seka, Desau, Tiu, Tesh, Nihab, Uatjântj,
Mekhe. The names are primitive in form. We know nothing more about them.
Last year Mr. C. T. Currelly attempted to excavate at Buto, in order to
find traces of the predynastic kingdom, but owing to the infiltration of