William Matthew Petrie English archaeologist Date of Birth: 03.06.1853 Country: Great Britain

William Matthew Flinders Petrie: A Biography

William Matthew Flinders Petrie was a prominent English archaeologist and explorer of ancient monuments in the Middle East. Initially, Petrie had no intention of dedicating himself to archaeology and instead pursued mathematics and natural sciences as a hobby. However, in 1880, he traveled to Egypt with a fascination for deciphering the numerical symbolism of the pyramids. There, he witnessed barbaric excavation methods that destroyed monuments, prompting him to undertake archaeological research himself. Petrie firmly believed that meticulous and cautious methods were necessary to achieve true results, often referred to as "sieving through a sieve".

Soon, Petrie gained renown as the most successful "treasure hunter" of antiquities. For many decades, he lived in the Middle East, embarking on expeditions under extremely challenging conditions, often risking his life. He ventured alone inside the Pyramid of Khufu and later discovered Greek settlements in Egypt, including Daphne, where the prophet Jeremiah spent his final days. Among the vast ruins of Tanis, the capital of the Hyksos and Ramses II, Petrie unearthed a large number of household artifacts.

In 1888, Petrie began excavations in the Fayum Oasis, where he discovered the renowned Greco-Egyptian portraits and entire layers of papyri. This discovery led to the rapid development of papyrology. As a recognized expert in antiquities, Petrie worked either independently with a group of assistants or under the auspices of various archaeological societies. He uncovered several magnificent monuments from the Amarna period and a hymn in honor of Pharaoh Senusret III, which exemplified ancient Near Eastern poetry closely resembling biblical writings.

In the winter of 1896, in the region of Thebes, Petrie discovered a stela of Pharaoh Merneptah (end of the 8th century BCE), which was later published by Professor Spiegelberg of the University of Strasbourg. This stela, mentioning Israel, is the oldest Egyptian monument directly linked to the history of the Exodus (see the question of the chronology of the Exodus in the Pentateuch). During the same period, on behalf of the Palestine Exploration Fund, Petrie conducted excavations near Gaza and uncovered the ruins of the city of Lachish, which played a significant role in the history of the Divided Kingdoms.

In the early 20th century, Petrie became the first person to discover monuments of the Sinai script. Even in his advanced years, the scholar found a large collection of papyri in Oxyrhynchus, including Jewish hymns from the 2nd and 3rd centuries CE. Petrie was the creator of one of the first scientifically substantiated methods of dating monuments. He published a corpus of Egyptian inscriptions and an atlas of tools. His body of work includes 90 volumes.