In Britain In his teenage years, Petrie surveyed British prehistoric monuments, in an attempt to understand their geometry. He started with the late Romano-British
Rainsborough Camp, which was close to his family home in Charlton. At age 19, he produced the most accurate survey of
Stonehenge at that time (1872-3).
Giza survey His father had corresponded with
Piazzi Smyth about his theories of the
Great Pyramid and Petrie travelled to Egypt in early 1880 to make an accurate survey of
Giza, 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. Petrie's published reports of this
triangulation 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".
Egypt Exploration Fund affiliation Returning to England at the end of 1880, Petrie wrote a number of articles and then met
Amelia Edwards, journalist and patron of the
Egypt Exploration Fund (now the
Egypt Exploration Society), who became his strong supporter and later appointed him as professor at her
Egyptology chair at University College London. Impressed by his scientific approach, the university offered him work as the successor to
Édouard 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.
Koptos was this ithyphallic representation of Min with Senureset I. Prudery toward erect representations got in the way of photography and exhibition of the city's artifacts in Victorian times into even the 1980s. Here, then-assistant
Margaret Murray covered the member for Petrie's photograph. Some items were totally omitted from the initial record to protect sensibilities, which can lead to problems of provenance for archaeological phalloi.
Tanis dig He first went to a
New Kingdom site at
Tanis, 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 an
amateur 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.
Tell Nebesheh dig In 1886, while working for the Egypt Exploration Fund, Petrie excavated at
Tell Nebesheh in the Eastern Nile Delta. This site is located 8 miles southeast of
Tanis and, among the remains of an ancient temple there, Petrie found a royal sphinx, now located at the
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Nile and Sehel Island 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 at
Sehel Island near
Aswan to draw and photograph thousands of early Egyptian inscriptions on a cliff face, recording embassies to
Nubia,
famines and wars. inscription on
Sehel Island in the Nile
Fayum burials 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 at
Fayum, particularly interested in post-30 BC burials, which had not previously been fully studied. He found intact tombs and 60 of the famous
portraits, and discovered from inscriptions on the mummies that they were kept with their living families for generations before burial. Under
Auguste Mariette's arrangements, he sent 50% of these portraits to the
Egyptian department of antiquities. However, when he later found that
Gaston 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 the
British Museum. Resuming work, he discovered the village of the Pharaonic tomb-workers.
Palestine, Tell Hesi and Wadi Rababah In 1890, Petrie made the first of his many forays into
Palestine, leading to much important archaeological work. His six-week excavation of
Tell el-Hesi (which was mistakenly identified as
Lachish) that year represents the first scientific excavation of an archaeological site in the
Holy Land. Petrie surveyed a group of tombs in the Wadi al-Rababah (the biblical
Hinnom) of
Jerusalem, largely dating to the Iron Age and early Roman periods. Here, in these ancient monuments, Petrie discovered that two different types of
cubit had been used as units of length.
Amarna From 1891, he worked on the temple of
Aten at
Tell-el-Amarna, discovering a
New Kingdom painted pavement 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.
Discovery of the 'Israel' or Merneptah stele In early 1896, Petrie and his archaeological team were conducting excavations on a temple in Petrie's area of concession at
Luxor. This temple complex was located just north of the original funerary temple of Amenhotep III, which had been built on a flood plain. They were initially surprised that this building which they were excavating was also attributed to
Amenophis III since only his name appeared on blocks strewn over the site...Could one king have had two mortuary temples? Petrie dug and soon solved the puzzle: the temple had been built by
Merneptah or Merenptah, the son and successor of Ramesses II, almost entirely from stone which had been plundered from the temple of Amenophis III nearby. Statues of the latter had been smashed and the pieces thrown into the foundations; fragments of couchant stone jackals, which must have once formed an imposing avenue approaching the pylon, and broken drums gave some idea of the splendour of the original temple. A statue of Merneptah himself was found—the first known portrait of this king....Better was to follow: two splendid stelae were found, both of them usurped on the reverse side by Merneptah, who had turned them face to the wall. One, beautifully carved, showed Amenophis III in battle with Nubians and Syrians; the other, of black granite, was over ten feet high, larger than any stela previously known; the original text commemorated the building achievements of Amenophis and described the beauties and magnificence of the temple in which it had stood. When it could be turned over, an inscription of Merneptah was revealed, recording his triumphs over the
Libyans and the
Peoples of the Sea; Wilhelm Spiegelberg|[Wilhelm] Spiegelberg [a noted German philologist] came over to read it, and near the end of the text he was puzzled by one name, that of a people or tribe whom Merenptah had victoriously smitten-
"I.si.ri.ar?" It was Petrie whose quick imaginative mind leapt to the solution: "Israel!" Spiegelberg agreed that it must be so. "Won't the reverends be pleased?" was his comment. At dinner that evening Petrie prophesied: "This stele will be better known in the world than anything else I have found." It was the first mention of the word "Israel" in any Egyptian text and the news made headlines when it reached the English papers. and in June 1902 he was elected a
Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS). He was elected to the
American Philosophical Society in 1905.
Hu and Abadiya cemeteries From 1889 to 1899, Petrie directed a team excavating over 17 cemeteries containing numerous graves between Hu and Abadiya, Egypt. The dig team included
Beatrice 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'. == Discovery of the Proto-Sinaitic script ==