ALBANY, New York: The 27-year-old British archaeologist was making his first trip to Egypt, on a mission to uncover the truth about the Great Pyramid. When he moved into an abandoned tomb at Giza and slept on a hammock, everyone noticed the unconventional William Matthew Flinders Petrie.
Petrie became even harder to ignore after his 1880 adventure as he brought a scientific approach to excavations and, as a result, changed what the world knew about the ancient civilization.
Some of his best discoveries from the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology at University College London are currently touring the United States. Excavating Egypt is at the Albany Institute of History & Art through June 4.
Known as the father of Egyptian archaeology, Petrie got his start by measuring the Great Pyramid and dispelling the popular notion that the structure contained mystical secrets. He determined it was only a monument to a pharaoh.
That really placed him on the archaeological map, said Tammis Groft, the Albany Institute s deputy director for collections and exhibitions. It really helped the beginnings of the rewriting of Egyptian history.
Trained as a surveyor, Petrie was involved with digs at some 50 sites during his career. The exhibit contains 221 artifacts, many that are among the earliest examples of their kind.
It s really highlighting his work and the contributions that he made to the field of archaeology, which were extraordinary in their day as well as today, Groft said. The thing I m really struck by is the range of materials . Each piece in itself has a wonderful story to tell.
Like the bead-net dress that is one of two such garments that have survived from the Old Kingdom period, about 2400 B.C. Worn over another garment, it would have rattled with movement. One of Petrie s students found a box containing thousands of beads and shells in the previously robbed tomb of a girl, and they were restrung based on pictures from the period.
Sometimes he would go back to sites that had already been excavated and he would use his own methodical methods and discover great new things that people had just really overlooked, Groft said.
Petrie was a pioneer in using small, everyday items to piece together a historical record. He saw sites as time capsules and relied on variations in pottery, for example, in the dating process. One tomb group in the exhibit, from about 2000 B.C., contains bowls and jars, a wooden doll, a jewelry box and a scarab.
At a time when excavation often seemed little more than a treasure hunt, he saw the need to develop scientific methods and techniques for the practice of archaeology. Said Gay Robins, an art history professor at Emory University in Atlanta, which debuted the exhibit at Michael C. Carlos Museum and published a companion catalog.
Petrie excavated Amarna, where he identified the palace of Akhenaten, the first monotheistic pharaoh, and his wife, Nefertiti. The exhibit contains five artifacts bearing her iconic profile.
At Hawara, Petrie unearthed a Roman cemetery where mummies were accompanied by painted portraits of the dead. The Petrie Museum has the largest collection of these second-century portraits, and one is part of the exhibit.
Petrie, also a prolific author, taught at University College London for 40 years and died in 1942. The present has its most serious duty to history in saving the past for the benefit of the future, he once wrote.
The exhibit is traveling while the Petrie Museum, which has 80,000 objects in its collection. Other locations include: Mount Holyoke College Art Museum in South Hadley, Massachusetts, Jan. 28-July 29, 2007; Museum of New Mexico, Museum of Fine Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Aug. 24, 2007-Jan. 6, 2008; and University of Miami, Lowe Art Museum in Coral Gables, Florida, June 28-Nov. 2, 2008. AP
