comparative ethnology has made it clear that the sacred stone knives and implements of the Egyptian and Jewish priestly ritual were natural survivals of that previous period. For sacrificial or ritual purposes, the knife of stone was considered more sacred than the knife of bronze or iron, simply because it was ancient; just as to-day in India, Brahman priests kindle the sacred fire, not with matches or flint and steel, but by a process found in the earliest, lowest stages of human culture—by violently boring a pointed stick into another piece of wood until a spark comes; and just as to-day, in Europe and America, the architecture of the middle ages survives as a special religious form in the erection of our most recent churches, and to such an extent that thousands on thousands of us feel that we can not worship fitly unless in the midst of windows, decorations, vessels, implements, vestments, and ornaments, no longer used elsewhere, but which have survived in sundry branches of the Christian Church, and derived a special sanctity from the fact that they are of ancient origin.
Taking, then, the whole mass of testimony together, even though a plausible or very strong argument against single evidences may be made here and there, the force of its combined mass remains, and leaves both the vast antiquity of man and the evolution of civilization from its lowest to its highest forms, as proved by the prehistoric remains of Egypt and so many other countries in all parts of the world, beyond a reasonable doubt.[1]
- ↑ For Mr. Southall's views, see his Recent Origin of Man, p. 20, and elsewhere. For Mr. Gosse's views, see his Omphalos as cited in the chapter on Geology in this scries. For a summary of the work of Arcelin, Hamy, Lenormant, Richard, Lubbock, Mook, and Haynes, see Mortillet, Le Préhistorique, passim. As to Zittel's discovery, see Oscar Fraas's Aus dem Orient, Stuttgart, 1878. As to the striking similarities of the stone implements found in Egypt with those found in the drift and bone caves, see Mook's Monograph, Würzburg, 1880, cited in the last chapter of this series, especially Plates IX, XI, XII. For even more striking reproductions of photographs showing this remarkable similarity between Egyptian and European chipped stone remains, see H. W. Haynes, Palæolithic Implements in Upper Egypt, Boston, 1881. See also Evans, Ancient Stone Implements, chap. i, pp. 8, 9, 44, 102, 316, 329. As to stone implements used by priests of Jehovah, priests of Baal, priests of Moloch, and priests of Odin, as religious survivals, see Cartailhac, as above, 6 and 7; also Lartet in De Luynes, Expedition to the Dead Sea; also Nilsson, Primitive Inhabitants of Scandinavia, pp. 96, 97. For the discoveries by Pitt-Rivers, see the Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland for 1881, vol. xi, pp. 382 et seq.; and for Campbell's decision regarding them, see ibid., pp. 396, 397. For facts summed up in the words, "It is most probable that Egypt at a remote period passed like many other countries through its stone period," see Hilton Price, F.S.A., F.G.S., paper in the Journal of the Archaeological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland for 1884, p. 56. Specimens of palæolithic implements from Egypt—knives, arrow-heads, spear-heads, flakes, and the like, both of peculiar and ordinary forms—may be seen in various museums, but especially in that of Prof. Haynes, of Boston. Some interesting light is also thrown into the subject by the specimens obtained by General Wilson and deposited in the Smithsonian Institution at Washington. For the Abbe Hamard's attack, see bis L'Âge de la Pierre et l'Homme Primitif, Paris, 1883—especially his preface.
