Petrie, William M. Flinders: Ten years' digging in Egypt: 1881 - 1891 (London, 1892)

ILL AIIUX

Another subject has quite unexpectedly come to
light. Marks of various kinds are found on pieces of
pottery-vessels here, some put on by the maker before
the baking, but mostly scratched by the owner. These
marks are many of them derived from the Egyptian
workmen's signs, corruptions of hieroglyphics. But,
as we shall see in the next chapter, the discoveries at
Gurob point to these having some kinship with the
Western alphabets. They are therefore the venerable

93. Clay Toys, Twelfth Dynasty.

first step in adopting marks to represent sounds, irre-
spective of their primitive form and significance.

That these marks were known not only to
Egyptians, but to foreigners here as well, is probable
from the discoveries of Aegean pottery in this place.
Intermixed with, and even beneath, the rubbish
mounds of the twelfth dynasty are pieces of pottery
which appear to be the forerunners of what we know
as Greek pottery in later ages. The ware, the motivesof
the decoration,belong to the Aegean,and not to Egypt;
either Greece or Asia Minor was their home, but long