New Prehistoric Investigations at Kom Ombo (Upper Egypt)

Abstract

It has been stated that "the year 1923 when Vignard published his work on the Sebilian in Southern Upper Egypt marks the foundation of modern palaeolithic field-research in Egypt". This opinión can hardly be contested when it is considered against the background of erratic investigations into the earlier periods of Egyptian prehistory during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Vignard's findings and conclusions have often been criticized in the past forty years, sometimes severely but more usually with courteous reservations about certain of his interpretations of the data. Nevertheless his 1923 memoir on the Sebilian at Kom Ombo, and the long series of articles which he published in France after his premature departure from Egypt in 1924, still stand as important landmarks in the prehistory of a country where local interest in the Palaeolithic and Neolithic remains has always been limited and where foreign research has generally been sporadic and discontinuous.