History of Development of Archaeology
in West Asia
Egypt
Rosetta Stone
The Rosetta Stone is listed as "a
stone of black granite, bearing
three inscriptions ... found at
Rosetta", in a contemporary
catalogue of the artifacts
discovered by a soldier of the
French expedition in 1799 and
surrendered to British troops in
1801
It is inscribed with a decree issued
at Memphis, Egypt in 196 BC on
behalf of King Ptolemy V. The
decree appears in three scripts:
the upper text is Ancient Egyptian
hieroglyphs, the middle portion
demotic script, and the lowest
Ancient Greek
Study of the decree was already under way
as the first full translation of the Greek
text appeared in 1803. It was 20 years,
however, before the decipherment of the
Egyptian texts was announced by Jean-
Francois Champollion in Paris in 1822
Ever since its rediscovery, the stone has
been the focus of nationalist rivalries,
including its transfer from French to
British possession during the Napoleonic
Wars, a long-running dispute over the
relative value of Young's and Champollion's
contributions to the decipherment, and
since 2003, demands for the stone's
return to Egypt.
Flinders Petrie
Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie (3
June 1853 – 28 July 1942) was an
English Egyptologist and a pioneer of
systematic methodology in Archaeology
and Preservation of Artifacts.
Born in Maryon Road, Charlton Kent,
England
Had no formal education
Held the first chair on Egyptology in
United Kingdom
Excavated sites like- Naukratis, Tanis,
Abydos and Amarna
Famous discovery- Merneptah Stele
Teenage years studied British Prehistoric monuments in order to
understand their Geometry
Petrie travelled to Egypt early in 1880 to apply the same principles in a
survey of the Great Pyramid at Giza
He was the first to properly
investigate how they were
constructed. Petrie's published
report of this triangulation survey,
and his analysis of the architecture
of Giza was exemplary in its
methodology and accuracy, and still
provides much of the basic data
regarding the pyramid plateau to this
day
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 down".
Tanis
In 1880 Petrie was given a position in
Egypt Exploration Fund and a sum of £
250 per month. In 1884, he went to the
site of Tanis with 170 workmen
Tanis was founded in the late Twentieth
Century and became the northern capital
of Egypt during the following Twenty
first Dynasty
Royal tomb of Tanis
It was the home city of Smendes,
founder of the 21st dynasty. During
the Twenty second Dynasty. Tanis
remained as Egypt's political
capital. It was an important
commercial and strategic city until
it was threatened with inundation
by Lake Manzala in the 6th century
AD, when it was finally abandoned.
Ruins of Tanis
Sehel
By the end of the Tanis dig he
ran out of funding but,
reluctant to leave the country
in case this 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. By
the time he reached Aswan, a
telegram had reached there
to confirm the renewal of his
funding
Fayum
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 these portraits to the Egyptian
Department of antiquities. However, later finding 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 then returning 48 to Petrie, which he sent to London for a
special showing at the British Museum.
In 1890, Petrie made the first of his many forays into Palestine, leading to
much important archaeological work.
His involvement in Palestinian Archaeology was examined in the exhibition "A
Future for the Past: Petrie's Palestinian Collection“
His famous publications are :
Arts and Crafts of Ancient Egypt (1909)
Scarabs and Cylinders (1915)
Tools and Weapons (1916)
The Corpus of Prehistoric Pottery (1918)
Prehistoric Egypt illustrated over 1000 objects in University College London
(1920)
But the great discoveries of the twentieth century in Egyptian Archaeology-
Tell el Amarna, the tombs of Yuaa and Tufu, the tomb of Tutankhamen, the
Badarian and Tasian civilisation fell into hands other than Petries.
Petrie did work on the temple of Aten at Tell El Amarna, discovering a 300-
square-foot of painted pavement of garden and animals and hunting scenes
Tell-el-Amarna
Tell- el Amarna has been visited by Wilkinson. Between 1883
and 1893 Maspero and the French Mission cleared the tombs
of Debris.
Egyptian archaeological site
that represents the
remains of the capital city
newly–established and built
by the Pharaoh Akhenaten
of the late Eighteenth
Dynasty (c. 1353 BC), and
abandoned shortly
afterwards
Small temple of the Aten
It was in 1887 that a peasant woman
digging for brick-dust manure found in
what is now known as the “Place of the
correspondence of Pharao”, the
famous Amarna letters, tablets of
baked clay written in cuneiform in the
diplomatic Babylonian of the period.
The tablets were fully published by
Winckler and Knudtzon and the site
was first excavated by Bouraint,
Barsanti and Grebaut and then by
Petrie in 1891-92 and then from 1907
onwards by the Deutsche Orient-
Gesellschaft. In 1921 the Egypt
Exploration Society continued for
many years being directed
successively by T.E. Peet, C.L.
Woolley, F.G. Newton, Llewelyn
Griffith, Frankfort and Pendlebury.
Pendlebury’s publication on Tel – el
amarna, have produced a most detailed
picture of life short lived city of
Akhenaten.
The work at Tell el-Amarna and the
excavation of Tutankhamen’s tomb in
1923 by Howard Carter, Mace and Lord
Carnarvon belong properly to the story
of protohistoric Egyptian archaeology
In Lower Egypt the settlement of Merimde Beni Salame was
excavated by Junker, Menghin and Scharff and claimed by them as
Neolithic and the Prehistoric culture of the Fayum depression were
studied by Ms Caton Thompson and Ms. E.W. Gardner during the years
1924-28
Fayum: Fayum A, associated with the 10 m lake of the Fayum and
characterized by lake and polished axe and adzes, sickles and crude
pottery , Fayum B associated with the 4-2m lake a much poorer
industry and containing no pottery. Ms Caton Thompson dated Fayum
A to about 5000 B.C and Fayum B to 4500 B.C with a span of 800
years for the duration of both groups
Neolithic weaving
• Fragments of cloth
from a Neolithic
settlement in the
Fayum
• one of the earliest
surviving textile
fragments from the
Nile Valley
Season 2006
Kom W
The survey of Z-Basin was continued and work started at Kom W, the
Neolithic settlement site excavated in 1925 by Gertrude Caton-Thompson
and Elinor Gardner. The excavation of this site is of utmost importance to
provide a better understanding of the Fayum Neolithic, including dating
evidence. The image below shows the trenches excavated in 1925, which
are still clearly visible in the landscape today.
In upper and middle Egypt the British school of
Archaeology in Egypt excavated at Badari under the
direction of Guy Brunton (1922-25) and Ms
Thompson dug a settlement Hemamieh, between
Qua and Badari
The Badarian culture provides the earliest direct
evidence of agriculture in Upper Egypt. It
flourished between 4400 and 4000 BC
Their result, published in 1928 in their joint work
the Badarian Civilisation and Predynastic Remains
near Badari established the Badarian as the
immediate predecessor of the Predynastic period in
Upper Egypt
Ancient Badari figure
Of woman (c 4000 B.C)
Later in 1928 and 1929 Brunton working on behalf of the British Museum
expedition to Middle Egypt, excavated at Deir Tasa near Mostagedda, a
cemetery and village, which he published in his Mostagedda and the Tasian
Culture (1937). Other excavations included those of Vignard at Naq Hammadi
and those at Armant, published by Mont Myres in their Cemeteries of
Armant I (1937).
The predynastic cultures of Middle and Upper Egypt had been divided by
Petrie into the three classics stages of Amratian (4000 to 3500 B.C.), after
al Amrah ; the Gerzean (3500-3200 B.C.) after the Girzah cemeteries ; and
the Semanian (3200-3000 B.C.), after al Semaynah
These terms were used interchangeably with the terms early, middle and late
predynastic. Petrie had very wisely begun his sequence at 4000 B.C., the
Badarian and Tasian cultures were now fitted before this, and a sequence
described leading from Tasian to dynastic times with Badarian, Amratian,
Gerzean and Semanianas intermediate stages.
Elise J. Baumgartel in her
book The Cultures of
Prehistoric Egypt (1947)
publishes the first results of
her researches in the
prehistoric material from
Egypt.
Naqada I she considers as the
last stage in a development
from the Tasian through the
Badarian, but a development
affected by external
contacts, such as the arrival
of people responsible for the
white cross- line painted
pottery which she derives
from Iran via Hormuz the
straits of Aden and the upper
course of the Nile.
Naqada II Baumgartel
considers as a new culture
derived from a home not far
from that of the Sumerians,
and which came into Egypt, as
Petrie first suggested, via the
Wadi Hammamat. The most
revolutionary are Boumgartel’s
ideas regarding the dating of
Fayum A and Marimde and
hitherto regarded as the
Neolithic beginnings of Egypt,
but which dates to Naqada II.
