BY W. M. FLINDERS PETRIE AUTHOR OF ‘PYRAMIDS OF GIZEH,’ ‘HAWARA,’ ‘MEDUM,’ ETC. WITH A MAP AND ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTEEN ILLUSTRATIONS SECOND EDITION, REVISED THE RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETY 56 PATERNOSTER ROW, 65 ST. PAUL’S CHURCHYARD AND 164 PICCADILLY 1893 ‘ In studying history, it must be borne in mind that a knowledge is necessary of the state of manners, customs, wealth, arts, and science at the different periods treated of. The text of civil history requires a context of this knowledge in the m

Although the discoveries which are related in this volume have been already published, yet there is to be considered the large number of readers who feed in the intermediate regions between the arid highlands and mountain ascents of scientific memoirs, and the lush—not to say rank—marsh-meadows of the novel and literature of amusement. Those, then, who wish to grasp the substance of the results, without the precision of the details, are the public for whom this is written; and I trust that, out

Position of Places in Egypt named in this Volume. 1. The Pyramids of Gizeh....

When , in the end of 1880, I first started for Egypt, I had long been preparing for the expedition; during a couple of years before that measuring instruments, theodolites, rope-ladders, and all the impedimenta for scientific work, had been prepared and tested. To start work under circumstances so different from those of any European country, and where many customary appliances were not to be obtained, required necessarily much prearrangement and consideration; though on the whole my subsequent

After a year in England, for the working out and publication of the survey at the pyramids, described in the last chapter, I undertook to excavate for the Egypt Exploration Fund. And as great things were then expected from Tanis, and a special fund of £1000 was in course of being raised for its clearance, the most desirable course was to ascertain what prospects really existed there. A preliminary exploring trip was made to several places in the Delta, in course of which I discovered Naukratis;

Before beginning work in the end of 1883 I visited Gizeh; and, as usual, many small antiquities were offered to me by the Arabs. Among such was the upper part of an alabaster figure of a soldier, wearing a helmet and armlets, which was plainly of archaic Greek or Cypriote work. I at once gave the man what he asked for it (never run risks in important cases), and then enquired where he got it. ‘From Nebireh,’ was his answer, and that was somewhere near Damanhur. So, a month or two later, I took a

When I was exploring in the marshy desert about Tanis, I saw from the top of a mound—Tell Ginn—a shimmering grey swell on the horizon through the haze; and that I was told was Tell Defenneh, or rather Def’neh, as it is called. It was generally supposed to be the Pelusiac Daphnae of Herodotos, and the Tahpanhes of the Old Testament; but nothing definite was known about it, and as it lies in the midst of the desert, between the Delta and the Suez Canal, twelve miles from either, it was not very ac

While living at Tanis I heard of a great stone, and a cemetery, some miles to the south of that place, and took an opportunity of visiting it. The site, Tell Nebesheh, is a very out-of-the-way spot; marshes and canals cut it off from the rest of the delta; and the only path to it from the cultivated region is across a wide wet plain, on the other side of which is a winding bank hidden among the reeds of the bogs, and only to be found by a native. After leaving Naukratis I went to this place, to

When in the end of 1886 I went to Egypt, I had no excavations in prospect, having bid good-bye to the Fund; but I had promised to take photographs for the British Association, and I had much wished to see Upper Egypt in a more thorough way than during a hurried dahabiyeh trip to Thebes in 1882. To this end my friend Mr. Griffith joined me. We hired a small boat with a cabin at Minia, and took six weeks wandering up to Assuan, walking most of the way in and out of the line of cliffs. Thus we saw

When considering the places favourable for future excavations I had named Hawara and Illahun, amongst other sites, to M. Grébaut; and he proposed to me that I should work in the Fayum province in general. The exploration of the pyramids of this district was my main object, as their arrangement, their date, and their builders were quite unknown. Hawara was not a convenient place to work at, as the village was two miles from the pyramid, and a canal lay between; I therefore determined to form a ca

Having finished opening the pyramid of Hawara, the next attraction was that of Illahun, a few miles to the east of it, in the Nile valley, at the entrance to the Fayum. This pyramid differs from all others in that the lower part is a natural rock cut into shape; upon that a mass of mud-brick rises, like that of Hawara, and around the base lie the fragments of the fine limestone casing which originally covered it. As almost all the pyramids had their chambers built in a sort of well in the rock b

At the mouth of the Fayum, on the opposite side to Illahun, stood in later times another town, founded by Tahutmes III, and ruined under Merenptah; thus its history falls within about two-and-a-half centuries. While I was working at Hawara some beads and ornaments were brought to me from this place; I soon went to see it, and found that it was an early site unmixed with any later remains. In the beginning of 1889 I worked out part of the town, and the rest of it was cleared by Mr. Hughes-Hughes

After having sampled the civilization of each of the great periods of Egyptian history, back to the twelfth dynasty, as described in preceding chapters, I longed more than ever to discover the beginning of things. For this Medum offered the best chance for reaching back. The presumption was that it belonged to the beginning of the fourth dynasty; and here we might perhaps find something still undeveloped, and be able to gauge our way in the unknown. Could we there see the incipient stages, or at

It might seem as if the researches described in these chapters were, though interesting in themselves, yet not of particular account in the wider view of human history and civilization. It is to focus together this new information, to show the results which flow from it, and to give a connected idea of our fresh light on the past, that this chapter is placed here. The application of scientific principles to archaeology, the opening of fresh methods of enquiry, and the rigorous notice of the peri

Probably most people have somewhat the ideas of a worthy lady, who asked me how to begin to excavate a ruined town—should she begin to dig at the top or at the side? A cake or a raised pie was apparently in her mind, and the only question was where to best reach the inside of it. Now there are ruins and ruins: they may differ greatly in original nature, in the way they have been destroyed, and in the history of their degradation. The only rule that may be called general, is that digging must be

It is always difficult to realise the state of mind of another person, even of one who is perhaps an equal in education, and who has been reared amid the same ideas and surroundings as one’s own; but it is impossible to really take the same standpoint as one of another race, another education, and another standard of duty and of morals. We cannot, therefore, see the world as a fellah sees it; and I believe this the more readily because after living the most part of ten years among the fellahin,

So much is Egypt the resort of the invalid, that the guide-books seem all infected with invalidism; and to read their directions it might be supposed that no Englishman could walk a mile or more without an attendant of some kind. In reality, Egypt is one of the most delightful countries for a walking tour, as regards circumstances. For three months from the middle of November there will never be a day too warm for active exercise; there will be hardly any rain above Cairo, nor as much in the Del