Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures

In ancient Egypt, flint or chert was used for knapped stone tools from the Lower Palaeolithic down to the Pharaonic Period. The raw material was available in abundance on the desert surface, or it could be mined from the limestone formations along the Nile Valley. While the earliest lithic industries of Prehistoric Egypt resemble the stone tool assemblages from other parts of Africa, as well as Asia and Europe, the later Prehistoric stone industries in Egypt had very specific characteristics, producing some of the finest knapped stone tools ever manufactured in the ancient world. Throughout Egypt’s history, butchering tools, such as knives and scrapers, and harvesting tools in the form of sickle blades made of flint, underlined the importance of stone tools for the agrarian society of ancient Egypt.