41 Facts About Flinders Petrie

Flinders Petrie 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 Irish-born wife, Hilda Urlin.

Flinders Petrie developed the system of dating layers based on pottery and ceramic findings.

Flinders 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.

Flinders Petrie has been referred to as the "father of Egyptian archaeology".

Flinders Petrie was raised in a Christian household, and was educated at home.

Flinders Petrie's father taught his son how to survey accurately, laying the foundation for his archaeological career.

Flinders Petrie ventured his first archaeological opinion aged eight, when friends visiting the Petrie family were describing the unearthing of the Brading Roman Villa in the Isle of Wight.

Flinders Petrie continued to excavate in Egypt after taking up the professorship, training many of the best archaeologists of the day.

In 1913, Flinders Petrie sold his large collection of Egyptian antiquities to University College, London, where it is housed in the Flinders Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology.

Flinders Petrie started with the late Romano-British Rainsborough Camp, which was close to his family home in Charlton.

Flinders Petrie's 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.

Flinders 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.

Flinders Petrie 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".

In November 1884, Flinders Petrie arrived in Egypt to begin his excavations.

Flinders Petrie first went to a New Kingdom site at Tanis, with 170 workmen.

Flinders Petrie 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.

In 1886, while working for the Egypt Exploration Fund, Flinders Petrie excavated at Tell Nebesheh in the Eastern Nile Delta.

Flinders Petrie then went straight to the burial site at Fayum, particularly interested in post-30 BC burials, which had not previously been fully studied.

Flinders Petrie 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.

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 Flinders Petrie, who sent them to London for a special showing at the British Museum.

In 1890, Flinders Petrie made the first of his many forays into Palestine, leading to much important archaeological work.

Flinders Petrie surveyed a group of tombs in the Wadi al-Rababah of Jerusalem, largely dating to the Iron Age and early Roman periods.

Spiegelberg was in charge of the edition of many texts discovered by his British colleague, and Flinders Petrie offered important collections of artefacts to the University of Strasbourg.

Flinders Petrie was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1905.

From 1889 to 1899, Flinders Petrie directed a team excavating over 17 cemeteries containing numerous graves between Hu and Abadiya, Egypt.

Flinders Petrie thus assumed that the script showed a script that the turquoise miners had devised themselves, using linear signs that they had borrowed from hieroglyphics.

Flinders Petrie published his findings in London the following year.

Flinders Petrie had discovered and correctly identified the character of the Proto-Sinaitic script, the ancestor of almost all alphabetic scripts.

In 1923, Flinders Petrie was knighted for services to British Archaeology and Egyptology.

Flinders Petrie began excavating several important sites in the south-west of Palestine, including Tell Jemmeh and Tell el-Ajjul.

In parallel with his work in Palestine, Flinders Petrie became interested in early Egypt.

Sir Flinders Petrie died in Jerusalem on 28 July 1942.

Flinders Petrie's body was interred in the Protestant Cemetery on Mount Zion, but he donated his head to the Royal College of Surgeons of London.

Flinders Petrie married Hilda Urlin in London on 26 November 1896.

John Flinders Petrie became a noted mathematician, who gave his name to the Petrie polygon.

Flinders Petrie's painstaking recording and study of artefacts set new standards in archaeology.

Flinders Petrie was responsible for mentoring and training a whole generation of Egyptologists, including Howard Carter, who discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun.

Many thousands of artefacts recovered during excavations led by Flinders Petrie can be found in museums worldwide.

The Flinders Petrie Medal was created in celebration of Flinders Petrie's seventieth birthday, when funds were raised to commission and produce 20 medals to be awarded "once in every three years for distinguished work in Archaeology, preferably to a British subject".

Flinders Petrie remains controversial for his pro-eugenics and racist views, and was a dedicated believer in the superiority of the Northern peoples over the Latinate and Southern peoples.

Flinders Petrie's headstone is marked only with his name and an ankh symbol, the Egyptian hieroglyph for "life".