First Steps in Archaeology

Antiquity ◽  
1961 ◽  
Vol 35 (137) ◽  
pp. 8-13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret Murray
Keyword(s):  
English Translation ◽  
British Museum ◽  
Middle Kingdom ◽  
Old Kingdom ◽  
Biblical Archaeology ◽  
Exact Date ◽  
Great Pyramid ◽  
University College London ◽  
Painted Pottery ◽  
Egyptian History

To trace the rise of archaeology is practically to write the biography of one man, Flinders Petrie.I first went to University College, London, as a student of Egyptology in January 1894. Petrie was then in Egypt, digging at Koptos, having in the previous year electrified the learned world by his discoveries at Tell el Amarna. Dr J. H. Walker was in charge of the Egyptology department (then and for years afterwards known as the Edwards Library), and Mr F. Ll. Griffith of the British Museum came twice a week to take a class in hieroglyphs. When Miss Amelia B. Edwards founded the Edwards Professorship of Egyptology, it was with the intention that it should be for the training of students in Egyptian archaeology as distinct from the Egyptian language. She had a small but well chosen collection of Egyptian antiquities which she bequeathed as a nucleus of a teaching collection, and with it her Egyptological library. One show case held the collection, and two bookcases held the library. There were also three ‘cradles’ which held the enormous tomes of Rosselini, La Description de Z’Egypte, and Lepsius’s Denkmäler. It is difficult for any modern archaeologist to realize how few books there were on any archaeological subject. For Egypt there were the early volumes of the ‘Egypt Exploration Fund (including the disastrous Bubastis) and Petrie’s early volumes, including Kahun, with its shattering suggestion that certain peculiar painted pottery found in a Middle Kingdom site (c. 2000 B.C.) came from the Aegean. Mariette and Heinrich Brugsch were well represented in the Edwards Library, and the Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology was the chief journal in which to publish short articles. Erman’s Aegyptische Grammatik, with its English translation by Breasted had just appeared and was being carefully studied by all Orientalists. Egyptian history began at the 4th dynasty, nothing was known of anything beyond Khufu and the Great Pyramid, except the fragments of Manetho’s history, the lists of Kings, of which the Tablet of Abydos was one, Herodotus, Josephus, and a few scattered items in other ancient authors. The Biblical record concerning Egypt dates from Abraham’s visit, but as the ruler of that country is called Pharaoh without his personal name the exact date is uncertain, but is definitely after the Old Kingdom.

Mathematics in Ancient Egypt

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Annette Imhausen
Keyword(s):  
Mathematical Knowledge ◽  
Ancient Egypt ◽  
Middle Kingdom ◽  
Old Kingdom ◽  
Material Resources ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Unit Fractions ◽  
Egyptian Culture ◽  
Mathematical Techniques ◽  
Egyptian History

This book traces the development of Egyptian mathematics, from the end of the fourth millennium BC—and the earliest hints of writing and number notation—to the end of the pharaonic period in Greco-Roman times. The book surveys three thousand years of Egyptian history to present an integrated picture of theoretical mathematics in relation to the daily practices of Egyptian life and social structures. It shows that from the earliest beginnings, pharaonic civilization used numerical techniques to efficiently control and use their material resources and labor. Even during the Old Kingdom, a variety of metrological systems had already been devised. By the Middle Kingdom, procedures had been established to teach mathematical techniques to scribes in order to make them proficient administrators for their king. The book looks at counterparts to the notation of zero, suggests an explanation for the evolution of unit fractions, and analyzes concepts of arithmetic techniques. It draws connections and comparisons to Mesopotamian mathematics, examines which individuals in Egyptian society held mathematical knowledge, and considers which scribes were trained in mathematical ideas and why. Of interest to historians of mathematics, mathematicians, Egyptologists, and all those curious about Egyptian culture, the book sheds new light on a civilization's unique mathematical evolution.

Mathematical Texts (I): The Mathematical Training of Scribes

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Annette Imhausen
Keyword(s):  
Teaching Mathematics ◽  
Actual Situation ◽  
Middle Kingdom ◽  
Old Kingdom ◽  
Mathematical Procedure ◽  
The Future ◽  
Mathematical Problems ◽  
Mathematical Texts

This chapter discusses mathematical texts that originated from the Middle Kingdom. While this may well be caused by the vagaries of preservation, it might be that it reflects the actual situation, that is, that mathematical texts of the kind that we have from the Middle Kingdom did not exist in earlier periods. With the reestablishment of central power by the king in the Middle Kingdom also came about a complete new organization of the administrative apparatus that was designed to be much less independent than it had been at the end of the Old Kingdom. And this may well have entailed the organization of teaching mathematics to the future scribes in a centrally organized style, with prescribed problems and their solutions. The chapter considers extant hieratic mathematical texts, mathematical procedure texts, and types of mathematical problems.

Lachish

2020 ◽  
pp. 125-156
Author(s):  
Billie Melman
Keyword(s):  
Daily Life ◽  
British Museum ◽  
Documentary Films ◽  
Biblical Archaeology ◽  
The Press ◽  
National Archives ◽  
History Of ◽  
Museum Archives ◽  
The Government ◽  
Visual Materials

Focusing on one archaeological mound, Tell ed-Duweir, in the lowland region of Palestine, in the vicinity of Hebron, identified as biblical Lachish, the fortress city in the kingdom of Judah, Chapter 4 moves between London, the Tell, and its neighbouring villages. The chapter is a history of a landmark excavation, which uncovers the variety of its archaeological, biblical, anthropological, social, and political layers. Drawing on a wealth of written and visual materials at the Wellcome Institute, the British Museum Archives, the Israel Antiquities Authority, the National Archives, as well as on the press and archaeologists’ records, the chapter relates the identification of the Tell as Lachish, the discovery of the famous Lachish Letters (in pre-Exilic Hebrew), and their effect on Biblical Archaeology and epigraphy, to the rise of new fields of knowledge such as physical anthropology and anthropometrics. The chapter argues that the excavation project was regarded by archaeologists as a means of modernizing rural Palestine and the lives of Palestinian peasants and labourers. It recovers the modernizers’ daily life on the Tell and their representations of it in writing, photography, and documentary films. It also recoups the process of the Tell’s expropriation, as a historical monument, by the mandate authorities. Alongside the reports of archaeologists like James Leslie Starkey (who was murdered on his way from the Tell to the opening of the new Rockefeller museum in Jerusalem), Olga Tufnell, and Charles Inge, the chapter recovers the voices of villagers as they are heard through their petitions to the government about their denied access to the excavated land.

Biblical Archaeology: Documents from the British Museum

1991 ◽  
Vol 84 (4) ◽  
pp. 308
Author(s):  
Gerald P. Verbrugghe ◽  
T. C. Mitchell
Keyword(s):  
British Museum ◽  
Biblical Archaeology

The Old Kingdom and First Intermediate Period

2020 ◽  
pp. 618-637
Author(s):  
Nigel Strudwick
Keyword(s):  
Ancient Egypt ◽  
Old Kingdom ◽  
Modern Culture ◽  
Intermediate Period ◽  
Time Period ◽  
Early Dynastic ◽  
History Of ◽  
First Intermediate Period ◽  
First Time ◽  
Egyptian History

The Old Kingdom is usually characterized as the first great epoch of Egyptian history, when the phenomenal cultural, iconographical and political developments of the late Predynastic Period and the Early Dynastic Period coalesced to give an eminently visible culture that says ‘ancient Egypt’ to the modern audience. This development may best be symbolized by the pyramid, the most persistent image of the era. For its part, the First Intermediate Period is the first clear manifestation in Egyptian history of the periods of disunity and systemic weakness that have affected every long-lasting ancient and modern culture in one form or the other. The time-period covered in this section illustrates for the first time both the highs and lows of ancient Egypt. The Old Kingdom is usually defined as consisting of the Third to Eighth Dynasties of Manetho (c.2686–2125 bc), and the First Intermediate Period of the Ninth and Tenth and roughly two-thirds of the Eleventh Dynasty (c.2160–2016 bc).

Precious-Metal Polychromy in Egypt in the time of Tutankhamun

2001 ◽  
Vol 87 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-71 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deborah Schorsch
Keyword(s):  
Precious Metal ◽  
Precious Metals ◽  
Visual Design ◽  
Symbolic Meaning ◽  
Middle Kingdom ◽  
Old Kingdom ◽  
Monetary Value ◽  
Eighteenth Dynasty

Gold and silver appear in Egypt at least as early as the Predynastic Period, and remained thereafter in use for the manufacture of ritual and funerary objects and personal possessions. On occasion, the ancient metalworker or his patron would choose to combine them in the manufacture of an objet de vertu: a jewel, a vessel, a royal coffin. The earliest uses of gold and silver, and electrum—a naturally occuring alloy of the two—together can be described as random, as the juxtapositions appear to have no meaning in terms of relative monetary value or visual design, and to have no colouristic or symbolic associations. During the Old Kingdom there appear the first objects that use precious metals systematically for their contrasting colours, a practice that becomes more widespread in the Middle Kingdom. The greatest sophistication in the use of precious metals can be documented during the second half of the Eighteenth Dynasty, particularly in the time of Tutankhamun, when gold—including alloys that are reddish or have been intentionally coloured red—silver and electrum, were used together also to exploit their inherent colours and to evoke symbolic meaning.

Tomb Robberies at the End of the New Kingdom

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valentina Gasperini
Keyword(s):  
British Museum ◽  
New Kingdom ◽  
Intermediate Period ◽  
Ancient Egyptian ◽  
New Information ◽  
New Interpretation ◽  
And Function ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
First Time ◽  
Egyptian History

At the end of the 19th century W.M.F. Petrie excavated a series of assemblages at the New Kingdom Fayum site of Gurob. These deposits, known in the Egyptological literature as 'Burnt Groups', were composed by several and varied materials (mainly Egyptian and imported pottery, faience, stone and wood vessels, jewellery), all deliberately burnt and buried in the harem palace area of the settlement. Since their discovery these deposits have been considered peculiar and unparalleled. Many scholars were challenged by them and different theories were formulated to explain these enigmatic 'Burnt Groups'. The materials excavated from these assemblages are now curated at several Museum collections across England: Ashmolean Museum, British Museum, Manchester Museum, and Petrie Museum. For the first time since their discovery, this book presents these materials all together. Gasperini has studied and visually analysed all the items. This research sheds new light on the chronology of deposition of these assemblages, additionally a new interpretation of their nature, primary deposition, and function is presented in the conclusive chapter. The current study also gives new information on the abandonment of the Gurob settlement and adds new social perspective on a crucial phase of the ancient Egyptian history: the transition between the late New Kingdom and the early Third Intermediate Period. Beside the traditional archaeological sources, literary evidence ('The Great Tomb Robberies Papyri') is taken into account to formulate a new theory on the deposition of these assemblages.

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