Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie (1853-1942) was an English archeologist who revolutionized excavation methods, thus laying the basis for modern archeological techniques.

Flinders Petrie was born on June 3, 1853, at Charlton near Greenwich. He was educated at home because of his ill health. At the age of 22, he published his Inductive Metrology, a study of ancient weights and measures. He also studied British archeological sites, including Stonehenge, from 1875 to 1880. From 1880 onward, he plunged into an active career of surveys and excavations in Egypt and Palestine interspersed with lectures in London and the publication of a prodigious output of 40 large volumes furnished with numerous plates, a series of popular books, and his autobiography.

Petrie began his excavations at the Giza pyramids in Egypt (1880). From 1881 to 1896 his archeological work was done on behalf of the Egypt Exploration Fund. He next excavated the Temple of Tanis (1884), the city of Naucratis (1885), the town of Daphnae and its environs (1886), the sites of Hawara, Illahun, and Ghurab in the Faiyûm, Egypt (1888-1890), and the temple and pyramids of Maydum (1891). In 1892 he was appointed Edwards professor of Egyptology at University College, London, a post he held until 1933. He then excavated the town of Coptos (Qift; 1895), discovering also the painted pavement of Tell el Amarna, the predynastic site of Nakada (1895), and the temples at Thebes (1897). In 1894 he founded the Egyptian Research Account as his own fund-raising and publishing venture.

Petrie spent 6 years (1898-1904) excavating the necropolis of Abydos, uncovering the royal cenotaphs of predynastic times. He excavated at Dandarah, Memphis, and again in the Faiyûm. Here he found a magnificent collection of Twelfth-Dynasty jewelry. He excavated in Palestine from 1922 to 1938.

Before Petrie, archeologists merely extracted from excavation sites any objects they considered to be works of art. But they did not follow the stratification of a site in relation to established chronologies. Petrie and his students and followers introduced systematic examination of any object found in a site. Second, he excavated so as to uncover and leave intact the different layers of the site and their relative position within it. Third, he developed what is known today as sequence dating, a system of chronology based on close study of the stylistic and technical development which every object found on a site exhibited. It was thus in his work as an excavator that Petrie made his biggest contribution. His views on epigraphy and the origin of the alphabet roused strong opposition. He was knighted in 1923 and died on July 23, 1942, at Jerusalem.

Petrie's best-known works are A History of Egypt, 6 vols. (1894-1925); The Royal Tombs of Abydos I and II (1900-1902); Abydos I-III (1902-1904); Researches in Sinai (1906); The Formation of the Alphabet (1912); Tombs of the Courtiers (1925); and Seventy Years in Archaeology (1931).

Further Reading

Petrie's work is discussed in Charles M. Daugerty, The Great Archaeologists (1962).

Additional Sources

Drower, Margaret S., Flinders Petrie: a life in archaeology, Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995.

For more information on Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie, visit Britannica.com.

Petrie, (Sir) George (1790-1866), artist and archaeologist. Born in Dublin, he was educated at Samuel Whyte's school and became a prolific recorder of Irish antiquities in water-colour. His interest in Irish culture extended to manuscripts and arte-facts, as well as prompting the purchase of such treasures as the Ardagh Chalice, and the Tara Brooch. In 1824 an English parliamentary committee recommended the establishment of an Irish Ordnance Commission. Lt. Thomas Larcom engaged Petrie to take charge of a Topographical Section. Petrie assembled a team of scholars to undertake the work, such as John O'Donovan, Eugene O'Curry, W. F. Wakeman, and Samuel Ferguson. In 1832-3 Petrie edited with Caesar Otway the fifty-six issues of the Dublin Penny Journal, in which he wrote many of the antiquarian articles himself. In 1840-1 Petrie launched the Irish Penny Journal, aiming to develop a broader appreciation of Irish culture. The Ancient Music of Ireland (2 vols., 1855-82), reflected his lifelong interest in the music of Ireland.

(1853–1942) [Bi]

English archaeologist who specialized in Egyptology. Born in Charlton, Kent, Flinders was educated at home by his parents and through what he could pick up himself. At an early age he developed an interest in antiquities through visits to the British Museum, and in surveying structures and earthworks under the tutelage of his father who was a civil engineer. In 1877 he published Inductive metrology and in 1880 he produced an excellent survey of Stonehenge, Wiltshire, UK, Wiltshire. These early publications stand at the head of a prodigious and wide-ranging bibliography. In 1880 he went to Egypt to survey the Great Pyramid at Giza, in 1883 becoming unpaid joint secretary and field director of the recently formed Egypt Exploration Fund, working first at Tanis. Petrie was responsible for advances in excavation technique and artefact analysis, devising a system of sequence dating of artefacts independent of period labels. Equally important was his recognition of Mycenaean and ‘proto-Greek’ pottery in Egypt and Egyptian imports in the Aegean, which formed the basis for cross-dating between the regions. In 1897 he married Hilda Isabel, by whom he had two children. He was elected an FRS in 1902 and a Fellow of the British Academy in 1904; he was knighted in 1923. From 1892 to 1933 he was Professor of Egyptology in the University of London. After 1926, dissatisfied with conditions in Egypt, he worked in Palestine until his death in Jerusalem in July 1942.

[Bio.: M. Drower, 1985, Flinders Petrie. London: Gollancz]

(pē'trē) , 1853–1942, English archaeologist, a noted Egyptologist. He excavated ancient remains in Britain (1875–80), Egypt (1880–1924), and Palestine (1927–38) and was (1892–1933) professor of Egyptology at University College, London. In 1894 he founded the Egyptian Research Account, which became (1905) the British School of Archaeology in Egypt. His most important excavations were at Memphis, but he made many other outstanding discoveries. Among these are the sites of Greek settlements at Naucratis (1885) and Daphnae (1886); tombs of the first dynasty at Abydos (1899); the stele of Merneptah at Thebes (1896), inscribed with the earliest known Egyptian reference to Israel; and ruins of 10 cities at Tel-el-Hesy (S of Jerusalem). His writings include many works on ancient Egypt, Methods and Aims in Archaeology (1904), and Seventy Years in Archaeology (1931). He edited A History of Egypt (6 vol., rev. ed. 1923–27), of which he wrote the first three volumes. A tireless and meticulous excavator, Petrie was responsible for greatly advancing the methodology of archaeology. He was particularly innovative in the interpretation of deeply stratified deposits, undertaking the seriation of undecorated pottery and demonstrating how ceramics from Egypt could be used to establish the age of archaeological strata outside Egypt, a technique known as cross-dating.