ABSTRACT
On 2 June 1923 the London Illustrated News published an article entitled ‘The mostimportant historical relic ever found in Egypt’ detailing a lecture in which Flinders Petrie described a recent purchase by the Louvre. The photograph central to the piece was of a carved ivory handle, bearing distinctly Mesopotamian imagery, into which was set a quintessential Egyptian Predynastic ripple-flaked knife: the Gebel elArak knife. For Petrie, the find had re-opened the ‘whole question of the relations of early civilisation in Egypt’ (Petrie 1917: 26). He viewed it as proof that Sumer and Susa were the originating area for his ‘Dynastic race’, who he believed had invaded Egypt at the end of the prehistoric period and instigated Dynastic civilisation. Although his theory continued to be advanced for many years by some (e.g. Emery 1961: 39-40) more sophisticated accounts of the manner in which Mesopotamian elements were incorporated into the early Egyptian world were being formulated. Henri Frankfort (1924, 1941, 1951) rejected Petrie’s model and was the first to synthesise comprehensively the evidence for the impact of these supposed Eastern imports:
Egypt, in a period of intensified creativity, became acquainted with achievements in Mesopotamia; that it was stimulated; and that it adapted to its own development such elements as seemed compatible with its efforts. It mostly transformed what it borrowed and after a time rejected even these modifications.
