Flinders Petrie

Professor Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie FRS (3 June 1853 – 28 July 1942), known as Flinders Petrie, was an English Egyptologist and a pioneer of systematic methodology in archaeology. He excavated at many of the most important archaeological sites in Egypt such as Abydos and Amarna. Probably his most important discovery was that of the Merneptah Stele.

Early life

Born in Maryon Road, Charlton, Kent (now S.E.London), England, Petrie was the grandson of Captain Matthew Flinders, explorer of the Australian coastline. Petrie was raised in a devout Christian household (his father being Plymouth Brethren), and was educated at home. His father, a surveyor, taught his son how to survey accurately, laying the foundation for a career excavating and surveying ancient sites in Egypt and the Levant.

Flinders Petrie was encouraged from childhood in archaeological vocation. At age 8 he was being tutored in French, Latin, and Greek, until he had a collapse and became self-taught. He also ventured his first archaeological opinion aged 8, when friends visiting the Petrie family were describing the unearthing of Brading Roman villa in the Isle of Wight. The boy was horrified at hearing the rough shovelling out of the contents, and protested that the earth should be pared away, inch by inch, to see all that was in it and how it lay. "All that I have done since," he wrote when he was in his late seventies," was there to begin with, so true it is that we can only develop what is born in the mind. I was already in archeology by nature."

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