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Flinders Petrie

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Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie (or Sir Flinders Petrie) FRS, FBA (3 June 1853 – 28 July 1942) was a British Egyptologist and a famous pioneer of systematic methods in archaeology and the preservation of artefacts. He is sometimes called the "father of Egyptian archaeology". He was knighted in July 1923.

Quotes

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  • The first consideration on reaching Egypt was where to be housed. In those days there was no luxurious hotel close to the pyramids; if any one needed to live there, they must either live in a tomb or in the Arab village. As an English engineer had left a tomb fitted with door and shutters I was glad to get such accommodation. When I say a tomb, it must be understood to be the upper chamber where the Egyptian fed his ancestors with offerings, not the actual sepulchre. And I had three rooms, which had belonged to separate tombs originally ; the thin walls of rock which the economical Egyptian left between his cuttings, had been broken away, and so I had a doorway in the middle into my living-room, a window on one side for my bedroom, and another window opposite for a store-room. I resided here for a great part of two years; and often when in draughty houses, or chilly tents, I have wished myself back in my tomb. No place is so equable in heat and cold, as a room cut out in solid rock ; it seems as good as a fire in cold weather, and deliciously cool in the heat.
  • In few kinds of work are the results so directly dependent on the personality of the worker as they are in excavating. The old saying that a man finds what he looks for in a subject, is too true; or if he has not enough insight to ensure finding what he looks for, it is at least sadly true that he does not find anything that he does not look for. Whether it be inscriptions, carvings, papyri, or mummies that excavators have been seeking, they have seldom preserved or cared for anything but their own limited object.
    Of late years the notion of digging merely for profitable spoil, or to yield a new excitement to the jaded, has spread unpleasantly—at least in Egypt. A concession to dig is sought much like a grant of a monastery at the Dissolution: the man who has influence or push, a title or a trade connection, claims to try his luck at the spoils of the land. Gold digging has at least no moral responsibility, beyond the ruin of the speculator; but spoiling the past has an acute moral wrong in it, which those who do it may be charitably supposed to be too ignorant or unintelligent to see or realise.
  • To the Egyptian the gods might be mortal; even Ra, the sun-god, is said to have grown old and feeble, Osiris was slain, and Orion, the great hunter of the heavens, killed and ate the gods. The mortality of gods has been dwelt on by Dr. Frazer (Golden Bough), and the many instances of tombs of gods, and of the slaying of the deified man who was worshipped, all show that immortality was not a divine attribute. Nor was there any doubt that they might suffer while alive; one myth tells how Ra, as he walked on earth, was bitten by a magic serpent and suffered torments. The gods were also supposed to share in a life like that of man, not only in Egypt but in most ancient lands. Offerings of food and drink were constantly supplied to them, in Egypt laid upon the altars, in other lands burnt for a sweet savour.
  • From the sebakh diggers, I secured a lot of seventy-five Attic tetradrachms in perfect condition, which served to show the accuracy of the mint in Athens, for most of the coins would have passed our own mint standard.

Quotes about Flinders Petrie

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  • He found archaeology in Egypt a treasure hunt; he left it a science.
  • In 1880 … Petrie set out on an expedition to Egypt long contemplated and prepared for, but delayed in the fruitless hope that his father might accompany him.
    So the survey of the pyramids, begun with an open mind but in the end intended to settle once for all controversy about prophetic feet and inches, was undertaken almost single-handed, the only helper being an old Egyptian who, as a child, had served Colonel Howard Vyse, and later Waynman Dixon and Piazzi Smyth. When Petrie, after two winters in Egypt and a year’s work on the plans, submitted his account to the Royal Society in 1883 Francis Galton reported so favourably on it that £100 was granted for publication. Galton continued his encouragement in subsequent years, and Erasmus Wilson, who, with Miss Edwards and others, had just founded the Egypt Exploration Fund, insisted that this new body should give the young man an opportunity to excavate. Thus his excavations commenced when he was thirty; they continued, with very rare exceptions, every year for over fifty years.
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