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-Kawamil 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 Fayyum
and Hel-wan 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
Southerners, whose primitive remains we find from el-Kawamil to el-Kab,
were of the same race as the Northerners whom they conquered, cannot
be decided.
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