Archaeology

Pioneer British Egyptologist Flinders Petrie (1853-1942) excavated on the west bank of ancient Thebes, across the river from the famous Temple of Karnak. Ancient Thebes is modern Luxor, a city in Upper Egypt on the Nile River. It was the religious center of Egypt during the New Kingdom period (c. 1550-1070 BC). During his excavations in 1896-1897, Petrie's excavation team carried out fieldwork on six temples. In one of these, the Temple of Pharaoh [...]

The Rosetta Stone is part of a larger stone monument known as a stele . Although many similar stelae have been found, the Rosetta Stone is arguably the most famous archaeological artifact ever discovered. In 1799, Napolean Bonaparte's army was campaigning in Egypt. The story goes that Napolean's soldiers were digging a new foundation near Rashid (Rosetta), a city near the Mediterranean in the Nile delta, when they discovered a large piece of an ancient [...]

Archaeology tells us about the past. Modern archaeology, as we know it, began in the mid to late 1800's. In earlier centuries, excavators were little more than treasure hunters, unconcerned about the historical context of their finds. But modern archeologists apply scientific methods to the study of past human cultures. The sequence dating method of British Egyptologist Flinders Petrie (1853-1942) had a profound impact on the application of scientific analysis to the field of archaeology. [...]