Flinders Petrie | |
|---|---|
 Petrie in 1903 | |
| Born | William Matthew Flinders Petrie (1853-06-03)3 June 1853 |
| Died | 29 July 1942(1942-07-29) (aged 89) |
| Resting place | Mount Zion Cemetery |
| Known for | Proto-Sinaitic script,Merneptah Stele,pottery seriation[2] |
| Spouse | |
| Awards | |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Egyptology |
| Doctoral students | Howard Carter |
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Sir William Matthew Flinders PetrieFRS FBA ((1853-06-03)3 June 1853 –(1942-07-29)29 July 1942), commonly known as simplySir Flinders Petrie, was anEnglishEgyptologist and a pioneer of systematic methodology inarchaeology and the preservation of artefacts.[3] He held the first chair of Egyptology in theUnited Kingdom, and excavated many of the most important archaeological sites inEgypt in conjunction with his Irish-born wife,Hilda Urlin.[4] Some consider his most famous discovery to be that of theMerneptah Stele,[5] an opinion with which Petrie himself concurred.[6] Undoubtedly at least as important is his 1905 discovery and correct identification of the character of theProto-Sinaitic script, the ancestor of almost all alphabetic scripts.
Petrie developed the system of dating layers based onpottery andceramic findings.[7] Petrie has been denounced for his pro-eugenics views; he was a dedicated believer in the superiority of theNorthern peoples over theLatinate andSouthern peoples.[8]
He has been referred to as the "father of Egyptian archaeology".[9]
Petrie was born on 3 June 1853 inCharlton,Kent, England, the son ofWilliam Petrie (1821–1908) and Anne (née Flinders) (1812–1892). Anne was the daughter of British CaptainMatthew Flinders, who led the first circumnavigation of Australia (and after whom Petrie was named).[3] William Petrie was an electrical engineer who developed carbon arc lighting and later developed chemical processes forJohnson, Matthey & Co.[10]
Petrie was raised in a Christian household (his father being a member of thePlymouth Brethren), and was educated at home. He had no formal education. His father taught his son how to survey accurately, laying the foundation for his archaeological career. At the age of eight, he was tutored in French, Latin, and Greek, until he had a collapse and was taught at home. He also ventured his first archaeological opinion aged eight, when friends visiting the Petrie family were describing the unearthing of theBrading Roman Villa in the Isle of Wight. The boy was horrified to hear the rough shovelling out of the contents, and protested that the earth should be pared away, inch by inch, to see all that was in it and how it lay.[11] "All that I have done since," he wrote when he was in his late seventies, "was there to begin with, so true it is that we can only develop what is born in the mind. I was already in archaeology by nature."[11]
The chair ofEdwards Professor of Egyptian Archaeology and Philology atUniversity College London was set up and funded in 1892 following a bequest fromAmelia Edwards, who died suddenly in that year. Petrie's supporter since 1880, Edwards had instructed that he should be its first incumbent. He continued to excavate in Egypt after taking up the professorship, training many of the best archaeologists of the day.In 1904, Petrie published Methods and Aims in Archaeology, the definitive work of his time, in which he defined the goals and methodology of his profession along with the more practical aspects of archaeology—such as details of excavation, including the use of cameras in the field. Insights include the contention that research results were dependent on the personality of the archaeologist, who, he felt, needed to possess broad knowledge as well as insatiable curiosity. His own abundance of that characteristic was never questioned.[12]
In 1913, Petrie sold his large collection of Egyptian antiquities toUniversity College, London, where it is now housed in thePetrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology. One of his trainees,Howard Carter, went on to discover the tomb ofTutankhamun in 1922.
Mr. Flinders Petrie, a contributor of interesting experiments on kindred subjects toNature, informs me that he habitually works out sums by aid of an imaginarysliding rule, which he sets in the desired way and reads off mentally.
He does not usually visualise the whole rule, but only that part of it with which he is at the moment concerned.
I think this is one of the most striking cases of accurate visualising power it is possible to imagine.
Francis Galton, (1883).[13]
In his teenage years, Petrie surveyed British prehistoric monuments, in an attempt to understand their geometry. He started with the late Romano-BritishRainsborough Camp, which was close to his family home in Charlton.[14]
At age 19, he produced the most accurate survey ofStonehenge at that time (1872-3).[citation needed]
His father had corresponded withPiazzi Smyth about his theories of theGreat Pyramid[citation needed] and Petrie travelled to Egypt in early 1880 to make an accurate survey ofGiza, making him the first to properly investigate how the pyramids there were constructed; many theories had been advanced on this, and Petrie read them all, but none was based on first hand observation or logic.[15]
Petrie's published reports of thistriangulation survey, and his analysis of the architecture of Giza therein, were exemplary in its methodology and accuracy, disproving Smyth's theories and still providing much of the basic data regarding the pyramid plateau to this day. On that visit, he was appalled by the rate of destruction of monuments (some listed in guidebooks had been worn away completely since then) and mummies. He described Egypt as "a house on fire, so rapid was the destruction" and felt his duty to be that of a "salvage man, to get all I could, as quickly as possible and then, when I was 60, I would sit and write it all".[citation needed]
Returning to England at the end of 1880, Petrie wrote a number of articles and then metAmelia Edwards, journalist and patron of theEgypt Exploration Fund (now theEgypt Exploration Society), who became his strong supporter and later appointed him as professor at herEgyptology chair at University College London. Impressed by his scientific approach, the university offered him work as the successor toÉdouard Naville. Petrie accepted the position and was given the sum of £250 per month to cover the excavation expenses. In November 1884, Petrie arrived in Egypt to begin his excavations.[citation needed]
He first went to aNew Kingdom site atTanis, with 170 workmen. He cut out the middle man role of foreman on this and all subsequent excavations, taking complete overall control himself and removing pressure on the workmen from the foreman to discover finds quickly but sloppily. Though he was regarded as anamateur and dilettante by more established Egyptologists, this made him popular with his workers, who made several small but significant finds that would have been lost under the old system.[citation needed]
In 1886, while working for the Egypt Exploration Fund, Petrie excavated atTell Nebesheh in the Eastern Nile Delta. This site is located 8 miles southeast ofTanis and, among the remains of an ancient temple there, Petrie found a royal sphinx, now located at theMuseum of Fine Arts, Boston.[17]
By the end of the Tanis dig, he ran out of funding but, reluctant to leave the country in case it was renewed, he spent 1887 cruising the Nile taking photographs as a less subjective record than sketches. During this time, he also climbed rope ladders atSehel Island nearAswan to draw and photograph thousands of early Egyptian inscriptions on a cliff face, recording embassies toNubia,famines and wars.[citation needed]
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By the time he reached Aswan, a telegram had reached there to confirm the renewal of his funding. He then went straight to the burial site atFayum, particularly interested in post-30 BC burials, which had not previously been fully studied. He found intact tombs and 60 of the famousportraits, and discovered from inscriptions on the mummies that they were kept with their living families for generations before burial. UnderAuguste Mariette's arrangements, he sent 50% of these portraits to theEgyptian department of antiquities.[citation needed]
However, when he later found thatGaston Maspero placed little value on them and left them open to the elements in a yard behind the museum to deteriorate, he angrily demanded that they all be returned, forcing Maspero to pick the 12 best examples for the museum to keep and return 48 to Petrie, who sent them to London for a special showing at theBritish Museum. Resuming work, he discovered the village of the Pharaonic tomb-workers.[18]
In 1890, Petrie made the first of his many forays intoPalestine, leading to much important archaeological work. His six-week excavation ofTell el-Hesi (which was mistakenly identified asLachish) that year represents the first scientific excavation of an archaeological site in theHoly Land. Petrie surveyed a group of tombs in the Wadi al-Rababah (the biblicalHinnom) ofJerusalem, largely dating to the Iron Age and early Roman periods. Here, in these ancient monuments, Petrie discovered that two different types ofcubit had been used as units of length.[citation needed]
From 1891, he worked on the temple ofAten atTell-el-Amarna, discovering a 300-square-foot (28 m2)New Kingdom painted pavement[dubious –discuss] of garden and animals and hunting scenes. This became a tourist attraction but, as there was no direct access to the site, tourists wrecked neighbouring fields on their way to it. This made local farmers deface the paintings, and it is only thanks to Petrie's copies that their original appearance is known.[citation needed]
In early 1896, Petrie and his archaeological team were conducting excavations on a temple in Petrie's area of concession atLuxor.[19] This temple complex was located just north of the original funerary temple of Amenhotep III, which had been built on a flood plain.[6] They were initially surprised that this building which they were excavating
During the field season of 1895/6, at the Ramesseum, Petrie and the young German Egyptologist Wilhelm Spiegelberg became friends. Spiegelberg was in charge of the edition of many texts discovered by his British colleague, and Petrie offered important collections of artefacts to the University of Strasbourg. In 1897, the Kaiser-Wilhelms-Universität Straßburg gratefully conferred to Petrie the title of doctor honoris causa,[21] and in June 1902 he was elected aFellow of the Royal Society (FRS).[22] He was elected to theAmerican Philosophical Society in 1905.[23]
From 1889 to 1899, Petrie directed a team excavating over 17 cemeteries containing numerous graves between Hu and Abadiya, Egypt. The dig team includedBeatrice Orme,David Randall-MacIver,Arthur Cruttenden Mace,Henrietta Lawes and Hilda Petrie. Predynastic, Old Kingdom, Middle Kingdom and Roman graves were excavated and published at 'Diospolis Parva'.[24]
In the winter of 1904-5, Petrie and his team (among which we findCurrelly, CapitainWeill, Lieutenant Frost, MissEckenstein) were conducting a series of archaeological studies in theSinai Peninsula centered around the site ofSerabit el-Khadim, a lucrativeturquoise mine used during theTwelfth andThirteenth Dynasty and again between theEighteenth and mid-Twentieth Dynasty. As they were thoroughly exploring and studying the temple ofHathor and the surrounding mining area, they discovered amongst, the Egyptian texts, a significant series of foreign inscriptions. Having been joined by his wife Hilda, herself also an egyptologist, Petrie realized the script was whollyalphabetic and not the combination oflogograms andsyllabics characteristic of Egyptian script proper. He thus assumed that the script showed a script that the turquoise miners had devised themselves, using linear signs that they had borrowed from hieroglyphics. He published his findings in London the following year.[25] He had discovered and correctly identified the character of theProto-Sinaitic script, the ancestor of almost all alphabetic scripts.
In 1923, Petrie wasknighted for services to British Archaeology and Egyptology.[27] Students ofUCL commemorated the investiture by writing and performing a musical play. A hundred years later, the questions had changed: "Between investigations on eugenics, decolonial practice, and calls for repatriation, what has become of Flinderella?"[26]
The focus of his work shifted permanently to Palestine in 1926. From 1927 until 1938, he excavated in Palestine under the auspices of theAmerican School of Research. he discovered ruins of ten cities inTell el-Hesi.[12] He began excavating several important sites in the south-west of Palestine, includingTell Jemmeh andTell el-Ajjul.[citation needed]
In parallel with his work in Palestine, Petrie became interested in early Egypt. In 1928, while digging a cemetery at Luxor, this proved so huge that he devised an entirely new excavation system, including comparison charts for finds, which is still used today.[citation needed]
In 1933, on retiring from his professorship, he moved permanently toJerusalem, where he lived with Lady Petrie at the British School of Archaeology, then temporarily headquartered at theAmerican School of Oriental Research (today theW. F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research).[citation needed]
Sir Flinders Petrie died in Jerusalem on 29 July 1942. (The date is sometimes given as 28th, but Margaret Drower's biography says Lady Petrie sent a telegram to their daughter on 28th saying "Father weaker". The following day, she went to the hospital and was with him when he died that evening[28].)
His body was interred in theProtestant Cemetery on Mount Zion, but he donated his head (and thus his brain) to theRoyal College of Surgeons of London. World War II was then at its height, and the head was delayed in transit. After being stored in a jar in the college basement, its label fell off and no one knew to whom the head belonged.[7] However, it was eventually identified, and is now stored, but not displayed, at the Royal College of Surgeons.[29]
There is a popular legend that Hilda brought back her husband's head in ahat box from Jerusalem after the war. But letters in the Petrie Museum archive illustrate that this legend is not true.[30]
Petrie marriedHilda Urlin (1871–1957) in London on 26 November 1896. The couple had two children,John (1907–1972) and Ann (1909–1989). The family originally lived inHampstead, London, where anEnglish Heritage blue plaque has been placed on the building in which they lived at 5 Cannon Place.[31] John Flinders Petrie became a noted mathematician, who gave his name to thePetrie polygon.
Flinders Petrie's painstaking recording and study of artefacts set new standards in archaeology. He wrote: "I believe the true line of research lies in the noting and comparison of the smallest details."[citation needed]
By linking styles of pottery with periods, he was the first to useseriation in Egyptology, a new method for establishing the chronology of a site. Regarding the pre-Dynastic period in Egypt, Petrie used the following numbering method, to be compared with the modern classification:[32]
Petrie was also responsible for mentoring and training a whole generation of Egyptologists, includingHoward Carter, who discovered the tomb ofTutankhamun. On the centennial of Petrie's birth in 1953, his widow Hilda Petrie created a student travel scholarship to Egypt.[citation needed]
Many thousands of artefacts recovered during excavations led by Petrie can be found in museums worldwide.[33]
The Petrie Medal was created in celebration of Petrie's seventieth birthday, when funds were raised to commission and produce 20 medals to be awarded "once in every three years for distinguished work in Archaeology, preferably to a British subject".[34] The first medal was awarded to Petrie himself (1925), and the first few recipients included SirAurel Stein (1928), SirArthur Evans (1931), AbbéHenri Breuil (1934),J.D. Beazley (1937), SirMortimer Wheeler (1950),Alan Wace (1953), and SirLeonard Woolley (1957).[35]
Petrie remains controversial for his pro-eugenics and racist views,[39] and was a dedicated believer in the superiority of the Northern peoples over the Latinate and Southern peoples.[8] In his 1906 sociological series "Question of the day", he expressed these views, ascribing social problems of England to racial degeneration brought on bycommunism,trade unionism, and government assistance to people groups he found inferior.[8] His racist views spilled over into his academic opinions. Believing that society is the product of racial biology,[39] he contended that the culture of Ancient Egypt was derived from an invading Caucasoid "Dynastic Race", which had entered Egypt from the south in latepredynastic times, conquered the "inferior, exhaustedmulatto" natives, and slowly introduced the higher Dynastic civilisation as it interbred with them.[8][40] With relation to some of his earlier conclusions in 1895, where Petrie had written: "the Egyptians were largely formed fromLibyan immigrants to begin with; the basis of the race apparently being amulatto of Libyan-negro mixture judging from the earliest skeletons at Medum."[41] Petrie also engaged in fierce controversies with the British Museum's Egyptology expertE. A. Wallis Budge, who contended that the religion of the Egyptians was not introduced by invaders, but was essentially identical to that of the people of northeastern and central Africa; however, most of their colleagues judged Petrie's opinion to be more scientific.[citation needed]
His involvement inPalestinian archaeology was examined in the exhibition "A Future for the Past: Petrie's Palestinian Collection".[42][43]
In August 2012, more than a hundred people gathered at Petrie's grave, to commemorate the 70th anniversary of his death. His headstone is marked only with his name and anankh symbol, the Egyptian hieroglyph for "life".[44]
A number of Petrie's discoveries were presented to theRoyal Archaeological Society and described in the society'sArchaeological Journal by his good friend and fellow archaeologistFlaxman Charles John Spurrell. Petrie published a total of 97 books.
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