Abstract
William Matthew Flinders Petrie is considered the father of scientific archaeology and is credited with developing a chronology of Ancient Egypt using the nondescript artefacts that other archaeologists had ignored. He occupied the first chair of Egyptology in England, and was also well-known for the museum built around his personal collection of Egyptian artifacts at University College London. Petrie's archaeological work has been studied by scholars, from various disciplines, for its scholarly, cultural, and historical value, while Petrie's life and career outside of archaeology have been the subject of relatively little study. Petrie himself wrote two life stories: the first, <em>Ten Years Digging in Egypt, 1881–1891</em> (1892), detailed the years before his professorship at UCL; in 1932 he published his second, more complete autobiography, <em>Seventy Years in Archaeology.</em> After he died in 1942 there were various obituaries and memorials that outlined his life and major achievements in archaeology. There was very little written about Petrie the man until 1985, when Margaret Drower's <em>Flinders Petrie: A Life in Archaeology</em> was published; it remains the most comprehensive work on Petrie's life. A thin volume of the correspondence of Hilda and Flinders Petrie also allows a glimpse into life on excavation. In short, much of what is known about Petrie focuses on his excavations in Egypt, his time as Professor of Egyptology at University College London, or the museum that bears his name. Subsequently, as a historical matter, Petrie's work in the discipline of eugenics has rarely been discussed as part of his career.
Highlights
William Matthew Flinders Petrie is considered the father of scientific archaeology and is credited with developing a chronology of Ancient Egypt using the nondescript artefacts that other archaeologists had ignored
He occupied the first chair of Egyptology in England, and was well-known for the
Petrie himself wrote two life stories: the first, Ten Years Digging in Egypt, 1881–1891 (1892), detailed the years before his professorship at UCL; in 1932 he published his second, more complete autobiography, Seventy Years in Archaeology
Summary
William Matthew Flinders Petrie is considered the father of scientific archaeology and is credited with developing a chronology of Ancient Egypt using the nondescript artefacts that other archaeologists had ignored. He occupied the first chair of Egyptology in England, and was well-known for the. Petrie’s association with both of these men, and the exchange of ideas, materials and theories among them, was influential on his own practical and theoretical work on civilization, race, and culture It was important for the research Galton and Pearson were doing, since Petrie supplied them with needed human data and aided them in their statistical analyses. From the time that Racial Photographs was published in 1887, Petrie worked closely with, and for Galton, and later with Pearson, on various projects that had more to do with statistics, heredity, that, if the Biblical chronology of time was right (and for him it was), the pyramids could not have been built by the Egyptians, but only by strangers under divine guidance He had measured out ‘pyramid inches’ and tried to ‘decipher the hidden message of the Great Pyramid’
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