( Mythical animals, florals, rosettes, religious and secu...)
Mythical animals, florals, rosettes, religious and secular symbols, more.
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(This looks at the history of Ancient Egypt and Mesopotami...)
This looks at the history of Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, and the civilizations that arose in the region over 5,000 years ago. From the beginning: "IN looking back to the beginning of civilization in any country, we have to deal with the physical changes which the land has undergone, and to consider the conditions which promoted or hindered the advance of its inhabitants. The nature of a country largely rules the nature of its people, both bodily and mentally; and it may even be true that, if sufficient time be given, the same character and structure will always be produced by equal conditions. From historical records, and the cemeteries that have been examined, it appears that the beginning of a continuous civilization in Egypt must be set as far back as about 10,000 years ago, or 8ooo B C. The question then is, how far the condition of the country at that age was similar to that now seen? The present state is quite new, geographically speaking, as the deposit of mud by the Nile, providing a suitable soil, is only a matter of a few thousand years. The accumulation of deposit is about 5 in. in a century (4-7 at Naukratis, 5-1 at Abusir, 5-5 at Cairo); and the depth of it is not less than 26 ft., and varies in different places down to 62 ft. The lower depths are, however, often mixed with sand beds, and do not show the continuous mud deposit; hence the average depth of 39 ft. is too large, and if we accept 35 ft., it will certainly be a full estimate. At the average rate of deposit, this would be formed in (1,000 years. But, on the other hand, the deposit may have been slower at the beginning, and hence the age would be earlier. Also, the lull depth may be greater, owing to some borings hitting on ground which was originally above the river. Hence the extreme limits of age of Nile deposit in different positions are perhaps 7,000 to 15,000 years, and probably about 10,000 years may be a likely age for the beginning of continuous Nile mud stratification. Hence it is clear that the start of the civilization was about contemporary with the first cultivable ground. Earlier than the Nile deposits there must have been some rainfall, enough to keep up the volume of the river, and to prevent its slackening, so as to deposit its burden. We must picture, then, the country as having enough rainfall for a scanty vegetation in the valleys, while the Nile flowed down a mighty stream, filling the whole bed as it now does in flood, and bearing its mud out to the sea, except in some backwaters which were shoaling up. Such a land would support a small population of hunters, who followed the desert game and snared hippopotami in the marshes. The Nile had been in course of recession for a long period before it began to rise again by filling its bed. The gravels high above the present Nile contain flints flaked by human work 5 much as in Sinai such flakes are found, deep in the tilling of the valleys which belong to a pluvial period. Yet after the Nile had retreated down to the present level, man appears to have been still in the Paleolithic stage, as freshly flaked, unrolled flints have been found at the lowest surface level of the desert. As the country, while drying up, and before mud deposits were laid down, would have only been suited for occupation by hunters, it seems probable that Paleolithic Man had continued in Egypt until the beginning of the Nile depositsthat is to say, till the beginning of the continuous civilization as discovered in the cemeteries."
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He was born William Matthews Flinders Petrie in Charlton, Kent, on June 3, 1853. He was the son of William Petrie and Anne. Anne was the daughter of Captain Matthew Flinders, surveyor of the Australian coastline, spoke six languages and was an Egyptologist. William Petrie was an electrical engineer who developed carbon arc lighting and later developed chemical processes for Johnson, Matthey & Co.
Petrie was educated at home. He had no formal education. His father taught his son how to survey accurately, laying the foundation for his archaeological career. At the age of eight, he was tutored in French, Latin, and Greek, until he had a collapse and was taught at home.
As a young man, Flinders Petrie himself applied such methods to the study of Stonehenge, the megalithic monument in southern England. In 1877, he published a book entitled Inductive Metrology which marked a new departure in archaeology. Three years later he was sent to Egypt to study the pyramids of Gizeh. There followed a lifetime of excavation in Egypt and Palestine. This work was supplemented by a teaching career at the University of London, where he was Edwards Professor of Egyptology from 1892 to 1933 and professor emeritus from 1933 until his death. Flinders Petrie revolutionized the work of excavation in the Near East. Whereas this work had hitherto aimed at nothing more than the extraction of antiquities from the soil, Petrie made it the means of recovering history. His early excavations in the area established the fact of there having been archaic Greek colonies in Egypt, at Daphnae and Naukratis, and suggested still older connections between Egypt and the Aegean going back to a period of which Greek scholars were then wholly ignorant. His excavations at Tell el-Amarna illuminated the most fascinating phase of Egyptian history, the reign of Ikhnaton (c. 1375 - 1358 b. c. ), until then unknown. Thereafter came discoveries in the prehistoric periods which laid the foundation for the broad study of Egyptian archaeology; for Petrie invented a "type sequence" of pottery which, where dates were impossible, afforded a chronological scheme into which all later discoveries could be fitted. For the first time the evolutionary process of culture could be followed. Turning to Palestine, where random and unskilled digging had resulted only in archaeological chaos, he drew up, at Tell Hesy, a pottery sequence which again was to be the basis of all future work in that country. Each season's work was immediately followed by a published report, and the great corpus of volumes written by Petrie is still indispensable to modern students of archaeology. For while other archaeologists, profiting by his example, have been able to develop a more complete methodology, Flinders Petrie remains the father of their craft and the shaper of their discipline.
(This looks at the history of Ancient Egypt and Mesopotami...)
( Mythical animals, florals, rosettes, religious and secu...)
Petrie was raised in a Christian household (his father being a member of the Plymouth Brethren).
Petrie married Hilda Urlin (1871–1957) in London on 26 November 1896. The couple had two children, John and Ann. The family originally lived in Hampstead, where an English Heritage blue plaque has been placed on the building they lived in, 5 Cannon Place. John Flinders Petrie became a noted mathematician, who gave his name to the Petrie polygon.
He was an English electrical engineer, known for the development of the arc lamp.
She was an Irish-born Egyptologist .
She was born in 1909 and died in 1989.
He was born in 1907 and died in 1972.
