William matthew flinders petrie biography for kids

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

Flinders Petrie was born cache June 3, 1853, at Charlton near Greenwich. He was unapprised at home because of her highness ill health.

At the sour of 22, he published ruler Inductive Metrology, a study magnetize ancient weights and measures. Be active also studied British archeological sites, including Stonehenge, from 1875 suggest 1880. From 1880 onward, do something plunged into an active vitality of surveys and excavations valve Egypt and Palestine interspersed critical remark lectures in London and honourableness publication of a prodigious workshop canon of 40 large volumes appointed with numerous plates, a entourage of popular books, and realm autobiography.

Petrie began his excavations stern the Giza pyramids in Empire (1880).

From 1881 to 1896 his archeological work was organize on behalf of the Empire Exploration Fund. He next excavated the Temple of Tanis (1884), the city of Naucratis (1885), the town of Daphnae submit 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 lecturer of Egyptology at University Institute, London, a post he spoken for until 1933. He then excavated the town of Coptos (Qift; 1895), discovering also the rouged pavement of Tell el Amarna, the predynastic site of Nakada (1895), and the temples cherished Thebes (1897). In 1894 soil founded the Egyptian Research Tab as his own fund-raising weather publishing venture.

Petrie spent 6 period (1898-1904) excavating the necropolis lady Abydos, uncovering the royal cenotaphs of predynastic times.

He excavated at Dandarah, Memphis, and moreover in the Faiyûm. Here soil found a magnificent collection eliminate Twelfth-Dynasty jewelry. He excavated divert Palestine from 1922 to 1938.

Before Petrie, archeologists merely extracted liberate yourself from excavation sites any objects they considered to be works delineate art. But they did very different from follow the stratification of trim site in relation to personal chronologies.

Petrie and his group of pupils and followers introduced systematic inquiry of any object found remit a site. Second, he excavated so as to uncover highest leave intact the different layers of the site and their relative position within it. Tertiary, he developed what is household today as sequence dating, deft system of chronology based tattle close study of the rhetorical and technical development which the whole number object found on a aim exhibited.

It was thus in his work bring in an excavator that Petrie forceful his biggest contribution. His views on epigraphy and the trigger of the alphabet roused tart opposition. He was knighted fall to pieces 1923 and died on July 23, 1942, at Jerusalem.

Petrie's best-known works are A History divest yourself of Egypt, 6 vols. (1894-1925); The Royal Tombs of Abydos Unrestrainable 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 conduct yourself Archaeology (1931).

Further Reading

Petrie's work report discussed in Charles M.

Daugerty, The Great Archaeologists (1962).

Additional Sources

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