What major contributions did Flinders Petrie make to the development of Egyptology?

Marek Macko 30.11.2011 ALGY101

Index Artifacts preservation.................................................................................................3 Index...........................................................................................................................2 Pottery Seriation.........................................................................................................5 The Pyramids of Giza..................................................................................................4 Used literature............................................................................................................6

1. Artifacts preservation William Matthew Flinders Petrie born on 3rd June 1853 in Charlton, London. Man who is considered to be father of systematic methodology in archaeology. Egyptologist which devoted his life to artifacts preservation in Egypt since his first visit to Egypt he was appalled by damage done to monuments and mummies, some of them were worn off or even completely destroyed. He found himself in need to save what has left as quickly as possible. When he was eight years old he witnessed excavation of Roman villa and this is how he describes his feelings: "I was horrified at hearing of the rough shoveling out of the contents and protested that the earth ought to be pared away inch by inch to see all that was in it, and how it lay." Maybe this memory from his youth lead him towards goals he achieved during his life and time spent in Egypt. He developed systematic process on how to catalogue all evidence and preserve every last bit of material found during excavation. He emphasized towards recording the physical dispersal of objects found in a site rather than just digging everything and collecting just big or complete pieces of pottery or statuary. This made his excavation techniques unique for his time. In 1928 during his time spent excavating cemetery at Luxor which was so huge that Flinders Petrie devised completely new system of excavation technique including comparison charts which are being used until today. When it comes to beginning of excavation Flinders Petrie proved to be master with insane imagination and creativity. He possessed passion for his work and obsession for perfection. His ideas lives on even after his death. Imagination is the fire of discovery, the best of servants, though the worst of masters. He encourages readers of his books to use imaginations every time. Before even starting excavation, to think about things we see in landscape like slopes of ground, hollows and ridges and think why are they here. His idea is to work systematically in order to preserve every bit of evidence we find and do not destroy it. One of main things he consider important before mindless digging is to have certain level of expectations what we are going to excavate and mainly to have certain aim and not to be greedy, not to expect to find something of great walue after just one week of work. In order to avoid loss of any evidence mainly written like stele or writing on walls it is vital to take lots of photographs and rewrite everything just in case. He applied those methods everywhere and we can see his fingerprints even today while looking at materials recovered form excavations in various places in Egypt. Thanks to his techniques today we can see living evidence from places where he worked in museums and private collections. Thanks to his believes in preserving every small piece of pottery and other evidence he was able to put the puzzle together by researching those small pieces. As he said: "I believe the true line of research lies in the noting and comparison of the smallest details." In this way he changed ways of collecting and researching of archaeological evidence forever and his methods are used until today.

2. The Pyramids of Giza In 1880 Flinders Petrie came to Giza to measure Great Pyramid to put one test the theory put forth by a contemporary writer that pyramids were built with help of heavenly forces and that it is possible to find clues about that in their measures. Also that there is encoded massage about faith of human race. Of course his new measurements proved theory wrong because old measurements that led to this conclusion were inaccurate. Petrie spent almost two years in Giza measuring all three pyramids and their surroundings. He was using theodolite which was extremely accurate for that time period. It was able to read every single second of an angle, also observations were repeated several times from one point to achieve best accuracy. After first measuring Petrie was allowed to perform excavation or rather cleaning of pyramids surrounding form debris and sand in order to find outer casing. After hard work he uncovered casing on three sides since forth had been already uncovered forty years ago. Unfortunately casing of third pyramid had never been finished so there was nothing to find. He then moved from outdoors to indoor measuring. Even though inside of pyramid had already been measured several times before he felt need to update those measurements and correct them. His findings shows great skill off craftsman when it comes to lying down the block, but also their carelessness. Gaps between block in queens chamber are less than sheet of paper thick, also outer casing shows same level of accuracy. Average gaps between blocks, which faces are perfectly square, is no more than one inch. His measurements and observations proved old theories about how pyramid were built as untrue and also helped us understand way how they were constructed. Petrie find out that corridors in pyramids are too small for sarcophagus to fit in so he came up with idea that sarcophagus was placed inside during building. Also that entrance to the pyramid was not meant to be opened (in meaning of doors) but it was sealed with one massive block of stone. Most of these findings and measurements made by Flinders Petrie during his first visit to Egypt are still being used by today archaeologist. He spent two years living in tomb, during day he was measuring, excavating and observing very small detail to provide us with valuable information that can still be used as useful asset for beginning of work. Even he made them more then century ago people still uses his work to which he sacrificed whole life. Thus I consider this as one of his major contribution to next generation of archaeologist and to development of Egyptology because he spent lot of time to give us knowledge about something as mysterious as Pyramids in Giza

3. Pottery Seriation Last thing I would like to write about is Pottery Seriation. It is method of relative chronology developed by Petrie during his dig at cemeteries of Diospolis Parva. He was uncovering graves that did not contain any vital evidence of their date, also fact that graves were excavated separately, stratigraphy was no use either. Carbon dating was not invented until 1940 so he had to improvise. Basically what he done, he arranged pottery from each grave on pieces of cardboard, but fact that he was excavating few hundreds of graves it was impossible for him to compare actual fragments and actual pottery styles. So he assigned numbers to each style of pottery for each grave and wrote it on slip of paper which he was than able to compare with rest. Aim of this method is to arrange pottery from graves into the order in which they were buried. This is done by comparing pottery since we know that pottery style changed during centuries. With this method he was able to state relative age of graves and order them from oldest to newest. This type of seriation is also called contextual seriation. What means that the most accurate sequence would be the one where concentrations of certain design styles had the shortest duration across the sequence of papers. As we know, Flinders Petrie was extraordinary man and for him pottery was not just an object but he believed that it can tell us much about people who created it, how they lived and what they ate. Thanks to his scientific methods he was one of the first scientific archaeologist ever. Apart from excavating and uncovering the past he was also professor on University College in London. He was first to take Edwards Professor of Egyptian Archaeology and Philology chair. During his life as professor he continued excavating in Egypt and during this time he mentored new generation of archaeologist such as Howard Carter. Upon his death he sold his personal collection of Egyptian antiquities to UCL which is now displayed at the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology. His last contribution to science was that he donated his head to Royal College of Surgeons of London to study if for its high intellectual capacity. The Great man died in 1942 in Jerusalem.

4. Used literature Bierbrier, M. (1995) Who was who in Egyptology (3rd ed., London,), pp.329-32. Petrie, W.M.F. (1892) Ten years digging in Egypt, 1881-1891. London. Petrie, W.M.F. (1904) Methods and aims in archaeology. London: Macmillan. Petrie, W.M.F. (1901) Diospolis Parva: the cemeteries of Abadiyeh and Hu, 1898-9 http://en.wikipedia.org/ http://archaeology.about.com