Flinders Petrie

Sir
Flinders Petrie
Petrie in 1903
Born
William Matthew Flinders Petrie

(1853-06-03)3 June 1853
Died28 July 1942(1942-07-28) (aged 89)
Resting placeMount Zion Cemetery
Known forProto-Sinaitic script, Merneptah Stele, pottery seriation[2]
Spouse
(m. 1896)
Awards
Scientific career
FieldsEgyptology
Doctoral studentsHoward Carter
Flinders Petrie by Philip Alexius de Laszlo, 1934 (detail)
The distinctive black-topped Egyptian pottery of the PreDynastic period associated with Flinders Petrie's Sequence dating system, Petrie Museum

Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie FRS FBA ((1853-06-03)3 June 1853 – (1942-07-28)28 July 1942), commonly known as simply Sir Flinders Petrie, was a British Egyptologist and a pioneer of systematic methodology in archaeology and the preservation of artefacts.[3] He held the first chair of Egyptology in the United Kingdom, and excavated many of the most important archaeological sites in Egypt in conjunction with his wife, Hilda Urlin.[4] Some consider his most famous discovery to be that of the Merneptah 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 the Proto-Sinaitic script, the ancestor of almost all alphabetic scripts.

Petrie developed the system of dating layers based on pottery and ceramic findings.[7] Petrie has been denounced for his pro-eugenics views; he was a dedicated believer in the superiority of the Northern peoples over the Latinate and Southern peoples.[8]

He has been referred to as the "father of Egyptian archaeology".[9]

  1. ^ Smith, Sidney (1945). "William Matthew Flinders Petrie. 1853–1942". Obituary Notices of Fellows of the Royal Society. 5 (14): 3–16. doi:10.1098/rsbm.1945.0001. S2CID 161308901.
  2. ^ Hirst, K. Krist. "An Introduction to Seriation". About.com Archaeology. About.com. Archived from the original on 28 February 2017. Retrieved 3 April 2011.
  3. ^ "Sir Flinders Petrie | British archaeologist". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 28 June 2021.
  4. ^ Breaking Ground: Women in Old World Archaeology', Sharp, M. S. and Lesko, B. S. (eds)
  5. ^ The Biblical Archaeologist, American Schools of Oriental Research 1997, p.35
  6. ^ Margaret S. Drower, Flinders Petrie: A Life in Archaeology, 1995, p.221
  7. ^ Nir Hasson (8 August 2012). "Paying Homage to Pioneering Archaeologist Who Lost His Head". Haaretz. Retrieved 25 January 2019.
  8. ^ Cite error: The named reference Silberman, 1999 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  9. ^ Stevenson, A. (2015). The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology: Characters and Collections (p. 120). Ucl Press.

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