Forgotten flint tools in museum boxes reveal how Egypt’s early farmers paved the way for the pharaohs

More than a century after they were excavated from beneath Cairo, almost 3,000 stone tools from Heliopolis show that specialised work was already reshaping village life before Egypt became a state.

Few places have a grander origin story than Heliopolis. It flourished thousands of years before the founding of Cairo, now Egypt’s capital and largest city. In pharaonic times Heliopolis was a major religious and intellectual centre, devoted to the cult of the sun god Ra. The ancient Egyptians believed…

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