An archaeologist is the best husband a woman can have. The older she gets the more interested he is in her.
Agatha Christie
When studying archaeology, it doesn’t take long before you come across one famous name in particular: Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie. There is a bit of connection with him at JUC because he is buried in the Protestant Cemetery next to the school.
Born in 1853 near London, England, he learned surveying from his father and enjoyed roaming the English countryside searching for ancient artifacts, visiting places like Stonehenge.
In 1880 he went to Egypt, where he would acquire much of his fame. He excavated and surveyed numerous sites. Possibly his most famous discovery was the Merneptah Stele, named after Pharaoh Merneptah, the son and successor of Ramesses II. On it was found the first Egyptian mention of the name “Israel”. It is now on display in the Egypt Museum in Cairo, which I got to see.
It was said that he got fed up with tourists bugging him while digging, so he wore a pink ballerina tutu to scare them off. And, I was told, when he worked in the hot confines of the Egyptians tombs, he sometimes even took that off!
Perhaps of greater value than the amazing artifacts he found, he applied a scientific method to archaeology. Before him, archaeology was more an ancient treasure hunt. For Petrie, it meant recording every detail. He also recognized the value of pottery, using it as a method of relative dating by recognizing how styles changed over time.
Petrie would go on to excavate at various sites around Palestine. After retiring he spent the last decade of his life living in Jerusalem. Convinced his head was growing because he was so smart, he willed his head to the Royal College of Surgeons in London so they could study it. He died in 1942. Unfortunately, there was a delay in shipping his head because of World War II. After it arrived the building was bombed and the records were lost, although it was re-identified a few decades later. They never did study it. Visiting his grave today, it seems like his is the only one in the cemetery whose headstone is separate from the body-stone.
Regardless of whether his head was growing, Petrie was a genius who made great contributions to archaeology, giving students of the past like myself more to enjoy. He saw the world in a different way and we are better off because of him.
