Past Perfect: Unearthing the Fayum Paintings

Although he never received a formal education, William Matthews Flinders Petrie (1853–1942) was well schooled by his father, a civil engineer who fostered his son’s interest in chemistry and ancient Egypt. In 1881 Petrie traveled to Egypt to study the Great Pyramid at Giza. There he was fascinated by ancient monuments and appalled by the destructive methods used to excavate them. In 1883 he took a job as excavator for the London-based Egypt Exploration Fund, established by the popular romantic novelist Amelia Edwards. Petrie was a meticulous archaeologist whose compilation of ceramic typologies and development of stratigraphic techniques revolutionized […]