Backward Glance: An Archaeologist Before His Time

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In the spring of 1942, knowing he was about to die, archaeologist George A. Reisner asked to be taken from a Cairo hospital back to the pyramids he had excavated at Gizeh. In his will, he bequeathed his extensive excavation notes to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and left a collection of 1,300 detective stories to Harvard University, where he had been a professor for almost 40 years.

These final acts were characteristic of this brilliant pioneer of archaeological field techniques, Egyptologist, excavator of Biblical Samaria, lover of detective stories, museum curator, passionate advocate of Egyptian self-rule and football coach. But even though William F. Albright praised him as “the father of the field methods which revolutionized the practice of Palestinian archaeology,” Reisner himself remains relatively obscure.

Born on November 5, 1867, in Indianapolis, Indiana, George Andrew Reisner received his doctoral degree in Semitics from Harvard in 1893, making him the university’s youngest graduate up to that time. While completing his doctoral thesis, Reisner served as the first football coach of Purdue University; over the next few years, he studied Assyriology at Göttingen, Germany, worked as an assistant in the Egyptian department of the Royal Museum of Berlin, served as an instructor in Semitics at Harvard, and worked on Egyptian amulets and model boats for a catalogue of the Cairo Museum.¹

By 1899, Reisner had developed a sufficiently impressive reputation that he was recommended as a field director to the wealthy Californian Phoebe Hearst, who had decided to sponsor an American excavation in Egypt. Reisner’s first project was to excavate the early dynastic Egyptian cemeteries of Naga ed-Der, on the east bank of the Nile about 300 miles south of Cairo. At Naga ed-Der, Reisner carefully documented the stages of excavation. He later remarked that, by studying his photos, it would be possible to return every object to where he had found it in a tomb. Such extensive photography is still not commonplace on digs today.

When Hearst decided to stop supporting his fieldwork, Reisner returned to Harvard and was appointed professor of Egyptology. From 1906–1910, Reisner directed three field projects: an archaeological survey of Nubia, the Harvard-Boston Museum of Fine Arts Expedition at the Gizeh pyramids and a Harvard expedition at Samaria.

In 1907, impending construction work on the Aswan Dam necessitated a rapid survey of the Nubian region that would be flooded when the dam was raised. Despite the time constraint, Reisner was able to plot each archaeological site on detailed maps and to excavate representative locations. His chronological scheme of the cultures of Lower Nubia remains in use (with few modifications) today. Reisner’s exacting methods and detailed records laid the foundations of Nubian archaeology and set the standard for excavation in Egypt.²

By the turn-of-the-century, the United States lagged behind several European nations in excavating Palestine. In 1905 the wealthy New York banker and philanthropist Jacob Schiff, eager to sponsor an excavation in Palestine on a scale equal to those conducted by the British and Germans, offered to provide $50,000 to the Harvard Semitic Museum.³ A Harvard committee decided to excavate Sebastiyeh, Biblical Samaria, and named Reisner field director of the first American dig in Palestine.

Capital of Israel for more than 150 years, Samaria lies among the hills of Ephraim, about 34 miles north of Jerusalem. According to the Bible, “In the thirty-first year of Asa king of Judah, Omri began to reign over Israel, and reigned for twelve years; six years he reigned in Tirzah. He bought the hill of Samaria from Shemer for two talents of silver; and he fortified the hill, and called the name of the city which he built Samaria, after the name of Shemer” (1 Kings 16:23–24). King Omri (885–874 B.C.E.) apparently moved his capital to Samaria, perched on a 300-foot-high hill, because it could easily be defended.

A two-year delay in receiving an excavation permit from the Ottoman authorities held up the Samaria dig until November 1907, when Reisner selected a promising excavation location and carefully hired the labor force. He sought a competent delegate to 069complete the first season at Samaria while he finished his survey of Nubia, and Harvard chose the German archaeologist Gottlieb Schumacher, former director of the Megiddo excavations.

Reisner opened the first trenches on the tell to show Schumacher his excavation procedures and then left for Egypt. Although regarded by Reisner as merely an agent, Schumacher quickly went beyond his limited commission and excavated a massive Herodian temple dedicated to Augustus. Irate, Reisner informed the Harvard committee that Schumacher’s work was little more than a treasure hunt. Upon Reisner’s recommendation, Harvard refused to publish Schumacher’s report and demanded his resignation. Reisner was left with a half-excavated site and a year-and-a-half remaining on his excavation permit.

Because Samaria was an exceptionally complicated tell, Reisner realized that the key to unearthing its secrets lay in understanding the nature of the strata, or layers of earth, left by its successive inhabitants.

As in Egypt, Reisner kept careful records, incorporating photographs and the best section drawings (a vertical cross-section showing the layers above one another) ever made for a site in Palestine up to this time. Never before had an excavation in this region been conducted under such exacting conditions.

During his two seasons at Samaria, Reisner excavated the western part of the Israelite fortress with its casemate walls, royal residence and storehouse. He also unearthed Hellenistic fortifications and the Roman city’s walls, forum, basilica and stadium. Just when he had “given up hope of making any sensational finds” and decided to finish work at Samaria, Reisner made his most spectacular discovery: more than 100 Hebrew inscriptions, dating to the reign of King Jeroboam II (786–744 B.C.E.), written by scribes on pottery fragments of bowls and jars.⁴ Discovered in an administrative building, the Samaria ostraca were apparently invoices, recording the delivery of “a jar of refined oil,” “a jar of old wine” and other goods.

Reisner took a great personal interest in his staff—many of whom had traveled with him from Egypt—and provided educational opportunities for their children. At the end of the Samaria excavation in 1910, Reisner, after paying his workforce, gave the women and girls candy and firecrackers, and invited the men and boys to a great feast with the village sheikhs.⁵

Reisner spent the remainder of his professional life in Egypt, despite increasing blindness, and rarely returned to Harvard for teaching. He excavated three small pyramids at Gizeh and discovered the tomb, largely intact, of Queen Hetepheres, mother of Cheops, who founded Dynasty IV. His camp became a popular stop on the itinerary of many archaeologists and tourists, who fondly recalled having Sunday tea in the shadows of the Gizeh pyramids with Reisner, known as “the Doctor” or “Papa George.”

Later writers attributed Reisner’s successes to his financial backing, and certainly his meticulous documentation of finds was partly due to these generous contributions. A more important reason, however, may have been his attitude towards his native workers. During a period of rampant colonialism, when foreign powers sought to fill their museums with the treasures of the past, Reisner advocated Egyptian self-rule and local control of antiquities, as well as proper conditions for native workers. While his contemporaries distrusted local laborers (Petrie denounced his bedouin workers as “a pack of ne’er-do-well, quarrelsome loungers”^a), Reisner believed that his employees should be thoroughly trained as professionals. He later wrote, “It must be remembered that the workmen are merely the excavator’s hands, and the closer the connection between the actual diggers and the directing intelligence, the more satisfactory the result.”⁶

Reisner departed from the customary practice of paying workers special fees for discovering important objects and instead provided his Egyptian workers with excellent salaries and good working conditions, thus ensuring that he would be notified about the discovery of all objects.

Although Reisner published all of his excavations during his lifetime, an example that has unfortunately been emulated by few modern archaeologists, he nevertheless failed to write a manual outlining his excavation methodology. Reisner’s Samaria colleague, Clarence S. Fisher, was perhaps his best trained disciple; Fisher’s later application of Reisner’s techniques resulted in the coinage of the term “Reisner-Fisher method.”⁷ Famed American archaeologist G. Ernest 076Wright in fact saw practically no difference between the Reisner-Fisher method and the better-known Wheeler-Kenyon method, used by Dame Kathleen Kenyon in her famous Jericho excavation. Yet Wright believed that Fisher followed only select parts of Reisner’s methodology that he thought important. This, coupled with Reisner’s return to Egypt, was, according to Wright, the major reason why Reisner’s methods were neglected following World War I.

For his own Shechem excavation, Wright realized the importance of Reisner’s careful analysis of tell structure, along with his precise excavation and recording procedures, and sought to train a new generation of American archaeologists in both Reisner’s and Kenyon’s techniques. Wright’s Shechem project, moreover, either directly or indirectly spawned other American excavations such as Hesi, Shema, Lahav, and Gezer.⁸ Thus a new generation of archaeologists has carried on and refined to this day the pioneering techniques Reisner developed in the course of his devoted and fascinating career.

In the spring of 1942, knowing he was about to die, archaeologist George A. Reisner asked to be taken from a Cairo hospital back to the pyramids he had excavated at Gizeh. In his will, he bequeathed his extensive excavation notes to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and left a collection of 1,300 detective stories to Harvard University, where he had been a professor for almost 40 years. These final acts were characteristic of this brilliant pioneer of archaeological field techniques, Egyptologist, excavator of Biblical Samaria, lover of detective stories, museum curator, passionate advocate of Egyptian self-rule and […]