W. M. Flinders Petrie

“ PREFACE Archaeology is the latest born of the sciences. It has but scarcely struggled into freedom, out of the swaddling clothes of dilettante speculations. It is still attracted by pretty things, rather than by real knowledge. It has to find shelter with the Fine Arts or with History, and not a single home has yet been provided for its real growth.
All other sciences deal with the things around us; with subjects which may, or may not, affect us. Even medical sciences are concerned with the mechanical structure of the body, rather than with the nature and abilities of the mind. ”

“ Our museums are ghastly charnel-houses of murdered evidence; the dry bones of objects are there, bare of all the facts of grouping, locality, and dating which would give them historical life and value. And it is only the self-evident facts of age that we already know, which can be observed in such a useless condition. So ignorant are49 curators that they will even divide up a tomb-group of objects, which are the keys to knowledge, and foolishly scatter them up and down the galleries merely as second-rate specimens of what is already there, without any date or history. ”

“ Without the ideal of solid continuous work, certain, accurate, and permanent,—archaeology is as futile as any other pursuit. Money alone will not do the work; brains are the first requisite. A hundred pounds intelligently spent will do more good and far less harm than ten thousand squandered in doing damage. Mere money gives no moral right to upset things according to the whim of one person. Even scholarship is by no means all that is wanted; the engineering training of mind and senses which Prof. Perry advocates will really fit an archaeologist better for excavating than book-work can alone. ”

“ The building, which is the mere modern shell, of no interest, and often of no beauty, is the master of the collection, which is restrained and crippled by such conditions that its use is impaired and its growth is stopped. The past is vanishing before our modern changes yearly and daily. There is ever less and less to preserve. And everything possible must be garnered before it has entirely vanished. The present has its most serious duty to history in saving the past for the benefit of the future. ”

“ The most ignorant dealer or plunderer may be a very successful digger, but he will not care for the value of a record. Recording is the absolute dividing line between plundering and scientific work, between a dealer and a scholar. The most blue-blooded dilettante collector who digs to possess fine things, but records no facts about them, is below the level of the dealer who will publish an illustrated priced catalogue, and state what was found together, and the details of the discovery. The unpardonable crime in archaeology is destroying evidence which can never be recovered ”

“ But to ensure the fullest knowledge, and the most complete preservation of things, in the long run, should be the real aim. To raid the whole of past ages, and put all that we think effective into museums, is only to ensure that such things will perish in course of time. A museum is only a temporary place. There is not one storehouse in the world that has lasted a couple of thousand years. Only two or three bronze statues have come down to us from classical times preserved by each generation. ”

“ It takes many forms; it appeals to the intellect, to the curiosity, to the affections; yet it is really a single instinct, and one which, from its strength, must spring from a primal cause.
The sense of loss touches us at every sunset, and in anticipation tinges all the afternoon with the sense of lengthening shadows. Even the things that seem most common, least worthy, when in use, all gain some being as time passes. Each little thing, that carelessly we value not at first, grows rich with store of years. ”

“ Are we justified morally in thus destroying a temple site, a cemetery, a town, while we may feel certain that others would see more in it in future? If a site would continue untouched, and always equally open to research, it would be wrong to exhaust such places. But what are the conditions? In Egypt sites are continually passing under cultivation, and once cultivated no one would ever know more about them. They are being continually dug away for earth to spread on the fields, and all that lies in them is scattered and lost. The stonework is continually the prey of engineers and lime-burners. ”

“ The R.A. who drops his aspirations because portraits pay best, the scientific scholar who patents every invention he can, are of the true commercial spirit, and verily they have their reward. Rather let us honour the professed dealer who will sooner sell a group to a museum than make a larger profit by playing to the wealthy dilettante and scattering things. Let us be quit, in archaeology at least, of the brandy-and-soda young man who manipulates his “expenses,” of the adventurous speculator, of those who think that a title or a long purse glorifies any vanity or selfishness. ”

“ ARCHAEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE
Nature of proof. The nature of proof is more complex than it seems to be at first sight. True enough, all proof is merely a matter of common sense; it does not appeal to any different faculty. And though a proof may follow as simply as possible from the facts, yet it cannot be understood by one who is not familiar with the facts to begin with. Trigonometry is the most obvious common sense to any one familiar with the formulae; and the formulae themselves are only common sense to any one who takes the trouble to argue them through. ”

“ Turn now to our own land, and on a wide western moor stand within a ring of grey stones, which our own flesh and blood there placed in faith and trust, for something greater than the cares of daily life; so far from us in generations, so far from us in thoughts, that we can hardly grasp the pulse of the same life with them, and feel what they felt. ”

“ Whether it be inscriptions, carvings, papyri, or mummies that excavators have been seeking, they have seldom preserved or cared for anything but their own limited object.
Of late years the notion of digging merely for profitable spoil, or to yield a new excitement to the jaded, has spread unpleasantly—at least in Egypt. A concession to dig is sought much like a grant of a monastery at the Dissolution: the man who has influence or push, a title or a trade connection, claims to try his luck at the spoils of the land. ”

“ Every year sees wiped out the remains which have lasted for thousands of years past. Now, in our own day, the antiquities of South Africa and of Central and South America have been destroyed as rapidly as they can be found. Elsewhere, engineers of every nation use up buildings as quarries or wreck them for the sake of temporary profit, or for more legitimate purposes as in the submersion of Philae and Nubia. Speculators, native and European, tear to pieces every tomb they can find in the East, and sell the few showy proceeds that have thus lost their meaning and their history. ”

“ With the responsibilities before us of saving and caring for this past life of mankind, what must be our ethical view of the rights and duties of an archaeologist? Conservation must be his first duty, and where needful even destruction of the less important in order to conserve the more important. To uncover a monument, and leave it to perish by exposure or by plundering, to destroy thus what has lasted for thousands of years and might last for thousands to come, is a crime. ”

“ He lives in all time; the ages are his, all live alike to him; the present is not more real than the past, any more than the room in which he sits is more real than the rest of the world. Cleaving to that one stream of life which branch by branch has flowed through so many channels in all the ages, and still runs on into the future, he can give account of the Fascination of History. ”

“ In a museum the collection is the essential; the building is the mere accident of the surroundings of the collection, and it should completely conform to all the requirements. Yet can it be believed that, even in the last year or two, enormous national museums—as at Cairo and131 Brussels—have been built without the smallest regard to the collection, or the opinions of the curators? The result at Cairo is the most deplorable sacrifice of the art and history of a great country to the follies and childish vanity of an incompetent and unsympathetic architect. ”

“ To refuse to preserve anything that is not worth some pounds per square foot, is the death of archaeology; and yet such are the necessary conditions in our present museums, however much we may expand them in their costly conditions. If we once think of what the condition of affairs will be fifty years hence, when many periods and places will be exhausted, and yet nothing but showy objects are preserved, we see that the future knowledge of archaeology is helplessly bound up in the question of our immediate expansion of conservation. ”

“ And until the common and obviously distinctive patterns of each country can be named at sight, and separated into their various sources, the observer cannot hope to gain that far more essential sense of the national taste of each people, and the sympathetic feeling of the relationship of any form or curve that may chance to be seen,—that conviction of the family and source of each object, which is the illumination of an archaeologist, the guide to fresh suggestions and researches, the mental framework which holds all memories in place. ”

“ The golden splendour of Mykenae, the earlier magnificence of Minoan Knossos, the delicate wares of still older Crete, all live with the same life as ourselves, all are precious to us as if we had made them, all make us fellow minds with those who thought and fashioned and treasured such things in like manner to ourselves. ”

“ The man who knows and dwells in history adds a new dimension to his existence; he no longer lives in the one plane of present ways and thoughts, he lives in the whole space of life, past, present, and dimly future. ”

“ Still more do places gain their hold upon us, unheeded at the time. A store of memories of days spent amid strong associations, that stirred190 and built the mind, are the truest riches in all after-life. We dwell upon those portions of the past, those days at Athens, or Florence, or in the Forum, as on a treasure; they are a portion of our life crystallised into the structure of our thoughts—a haven of the imagination. ”

“ The one-sided growth of modern training, which produces a B.A. who knows nothing of natural science, or else a B.Sc. who knows nothing of human nature, is assuredly not the ideal for a reasonable man. Archaeology,—the knowledge of how man has acquired his present position and powers—is one of the widest studies, best fitted to open the mind, and to produce that type of wide interests and toleration which is the highest result of education. ”

“ Organization, both of the plan of work, and of the labourers, is very necessary. Scheming how to extract all that is possible from a given site, how to make use of all the conditions, how to avoid difficulties; and training labourers, keeping them all firmly in hand, making them all friends without allowing familiarity, getting their full confidence and their goodwill;—these requirements certainly rank high in an excavator’s outfit. ”

“ Surely if we would draw back from wiping out a few years of the life of some man with whom we have no sympathies, far more should we shrink from even hurting the beautiful and cherished result of the life of a man whose mind we admire and honour in his work. ”

“ To unearth whole tombs or chambers full of objects, whether in an Egyptian cemetery or a Roman camp, and neglect to record and publish the facts of the position or groups of the objects, should debar the inefficient explorer from ever touching such places again. To remove things without ascertaining all that is possible about their age, meaning, and connections, is as inexcusable as it is easy. ”

“ If, then, the character of the excavator thus determines his results, our first step is to consider that character, and to give some outline of the aptitudes and acquirements—the wit and the cunning, as our forefathers well distinguished them—which are wanted in order to avoid doing more harm than good.
Firstly in every subject there is the essential division between those who work to live, and those who live to work—the commercial, and the scientific or artistic aim;—those who merely do what will best provide them a living, and those whose work is their honour and the end of their being. ”

“ And therefore the best thing that can be done under all these conditions is to work with the fullest care and detail in recording, to publish everything fully, and to then trust the history of Egypt to a few hundred copies of books instead of to solid walls and hidden cemeteries. The destruction which is needful to attain knowledge is justified if the fullest knowledge is obtained by it, and if that is so safely recorded that it will not again be lost. The only test of right is the procuring the greatest amount of knowledge now and in future. ”

“ To secure an attractive specimen, a tomb will be wrecked, a wall destroyed, a temple dragged to pieces and its history lost, a cemetery cleared out with no record of its burials. And when carefully authenticated and recorded specimens reach museums, their fate is not yet a safe one, especially in local museums. Stones will be built into walls, and ruined by the damp bringing salt out; objects are left to drop to pieces from lack of chemical knowledge, or from the official dread of the responsibility of doing right instead of allowing wrong. ”

“ To turn over a site without making any plans, or recording the positions and relations of things, may be plundering, but it is not archaeology. To remove and preserve only the pretty and interesting pieces, and leave the rest behind unnoticed, and separated from what gave them a value and a meaning, proves the spirit of a dealer and not that of a scholar. ”