Here is then a case like that of the Kamares pottery at Kahun. The evidence is clear, there is no visible loophole for avoiding the archaeological conclusion. And the only argument against it is that no such pottery has been found in Greece, but only more advanced styles of such fabric under later conditions. Now that the Knossos finds have led all those who see their value to grant a connection in the IIIrd or IVth Dynasty, we may soon see the fighting frontier pushed over to include this great and distinctive group of the early Ist Dynasty.

Nor does this stand alone. This year another class of foreign pottery has been found in the ruins of the temple of Abydos, of the Ist Dynasty, and perhaps somewhat before it (Fig. 64). The material is unlike any in Egypt, a dense black pottery; the facing of it is usually highly burnished, unlike Egyptian of that age; the forms are wholly un-Egyptian, the long pointed amphora with curved neck, and the hollow feet to vases, being unmistakably of the Greek family. Exactly similar pottery in material and finish, is found in fragments of the later Neolithic period at Knossos; a piece from Egypt and one from Knossos when seen side by side seem as if they had been broken from the same jar. The forms of the Cretan examples are not yet re-established, but some at least are the same as the Egyptian examples. As most of the cups of this type at Abydos had contained a brilliant red haematite paint, it is very likely that the pottery came over as vehicles for trade products.

Yet again in the Ist Dynasty deposit of ivory and glazed objects in the temple of Abydos, was a cast copper figure of foreign style which is of the same family as the copper figures found in the Diktaean cave.

And all this leads us back to the Egyptian prehistoric age. There we see commonly painted on the pottery, and on walls of a tomb, the large ships then in use. Some had as many as 60 oars, yet we see the greatest of the Venetian fighting galleys had only 24 on a side. A rowing ship is useless on the Nile, except for sometimes getting down stream, as no rowing would suffice to take a large vessel continuously up against the current. But the rowing galley has been the vessel of the Mediterranean, from the French navy back to the Phoenician, and no one knows how long before. These great vessels, which bore various ensigns showing the ports from which they started, must have been concerned in important business; probably trading the oil and skins and wood one way, and the dates and corn of Egypt in return. Among their imports were probably the foreign bowls of black incised ware, filled in with white, which are found even as far back as near the beginning of the prehistoric civilisation. They clearly belong to that foreign class which is found as far apart as Spain, Bosnia, and Troy; and the original home of this pottery has yet to be found, in that Mediterranean region about which we are just beginning to discover our own ignorance.

If at present our evidence of connection between Egypt and the West, before the XIIth Dynasty, rests upon the identity of styles and fabrics, we must remember how that same class of evidence in later periods has been amply reinforced by dated objects with inscriptions, found in most unequivocal positions. And we may then at last reach the conception that after all, civilisation started at much the same time all round the Mediterranean, but advanced rather sooner in Egypt than on the northern shores.

In this study of the facts which link together the early history of Europe with that of Egypt, we have now seen the varied sources and values of the different kinds of archaeological evidence; and the modes by which the accumulation of different evidences may reinforce the conclusions, and render them more exact.