Framing the Archaeologist: Archival Photographs

Images 1 - 20 are photographs from within the Petrie Museum archive collection. In most cases the images are accompanied by extracts from Petrie's journals and publications, either from within the museum or from the Griffith Institute, Oxford.

Journal extracts are courtesy of the Griffith Institute, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford and their permission to publish on this site is gratefully acknowledged.

We won't display all this information in the exhibition!

Please feel free to comment on the photographs - we would like to know what you think about them in terms of the history of photography, art history, excavation and archaeology and anthropology. We then hope to use these comments in the exhibition.

Image 9 - Muhammed Delta PMAN 2719

On the age of Muhammad abu Daud (24.12.1886):

“I have been much surprised to find how old our men are. Muhd whom I have always looked on as a boy is 24, and Tulbeh who seems far from full grown is 17; I should rather have put them down as 12 and 8 by comparison with English. Said is 30 and perhaps looks it. On the whole it seems as if they aged very slowly till about 25 or 30 to 35 or 40 and then look old quickly. A short mid-life, with long youth and old age seems the rule. Muhd is married this summer, about three months ago.”

Image 10 - Hilda Petrie on horseback

Hilda Dec 23 1898, market trip:

“Ali himself went on to Dichna, so returning we had only the black groom, Hassan Sudani, with us, and one arab, Mohammed Shergawi, and the horse, but going to Waqf we were a merry party of 16.”

Image 19 - Flinders Petrie with Camera

Hilda Petrie Letter November 1900 (Drower 2004: 159):

“Half a day’s excavation brings in fragments enough to take three of us several days’ time to mark up, classify, draw, photograph, and otherwise work over. It takes much of each day to group and sort these fragments: the fitting is often a great puzzle.”

Hilda Petrie Letter 13 January 1901 (Drower 2004: 163:

“There is an immense amount of accumulations of stone-bowl-fragments to sort out, from tombs of Den, Zer, Perabsen, and Khasekhamui. Flinders works half his day at the final sorting (with a magnifier) of the stones of Den, preparatory to our hunting for fits in the fragments, and, the remainder of the day, he does 15 or 20 photographs, to different scales, and draws the said stone vases when the scanty portions of them are put together.”