The Rape of the Nile

by Brian Fagan

  In the 1880s archaeological excavation was still a highly unscientific pastime, a form of licensed—or unlicensed—destruction that concentrated on large and impressive finds rather than the careful examination of a site and its contents. The objective was to find as much as possible in as short a time as practicable. Mariette’s field techniques had been horrifying and quite unscientific. So were those of Maspero and many other respected early Egyptologists. Flinders Petrie, a British pioneer of modern excavation methods on the Nile, whom we meet in the next chapter, used to lecture with ghoulish horror about Mariette’s digs and techniques. Petrie was a little unfair. Mariette was typical of his age, and he himself was no paragon by modern standards. But change was in the air. The Germans at Samothrace in the Aegean and at Olympia were setting new standards, with architects and photographers on site and the acquisition of information placed before finds. Field archaeology has begun a slow metamorphosis from a treasure hunt into an exact science.

  There had been some more careful pioneers in Egypt, too. A quiet Scotsman named Alexander Henry Rhind (1833–1863) had planned to pursue a sedate career at the Scottish bar. But ill health forced him to winter in Egypt in 1855. Rhind spent two seasons at Thebes searching carefully for a complete and undisturbed tomb that he could excavate and record in detail, for he deplored the fact that “attention was given almost exclusively to obtaining possession of the relics without sufficiently careful reference to the circumstances under which they were discovered.”16 The devastation and havoc wrought by Drovetti and Salt at Thebes were such that there seemed to be little chance of locating more than a few undisturbed tombs. Finally, he located an undisturbed sepulcher.

  Rhind excavated the site with considerable care. He left a step-by-step description of his dig, the contents of the tomb, and the position of the objects in the grave. He recorded the robbing of the tomb and its reuse and the identity of the last people to be buried there. The papyri found on the bodies gave him the names of the deceased. He described the excavation in his book Thebes: Its Tombs and Their Tenants, published in 1862. Unfortunately, Rhind died at the early age of thirty on his way home after a third journey to Egypt. Although Rhind was not the first man to describe an undisturbed Egyptian tomb, there is no doubt that he would have become a great Egyptologist had he lived.

  The members of the Egypt Exploration Fund chose a Swiss archaeologist, Édouard-Henri Naville (1844–1926), as their first excavator. Naville, extensively trained in philology, had learned his Egyptology from Karl Lepsius. By the time he was invited to work for the fund, Naville had already acquired a European reputation. His first excavations were at Tell el-Maskhuta in the delta, near the new Cairo-Suez canal. The trustees of the fund had made a deliberate decision not to work in Upper Egypt, but to concentrate on the unknown delta areas where spectacular results might be expected.

  Naville’s excavations at el-Maskhuta aroused considerable public interest. For years the site had been regarded as one of the two cities built by the Israelites for Rameses II, settlements known as Rameses and Pithom. A link with the Scriptures was definitely an objective of the first season, and one that Naville purported to obtain. He uncovered the remains of a temple, part of a city, fortifications, and a military camp, dating the settlement to between the fifteenth century BC and the fourth century AD. It seemed that Rameses II had built the city, but there was no sign of the Israelites. Naville studied the artifacts from the city and decided that the Egyptians had dedicated it to the god Atum, from which it was an easy step to “Pi Atum” or Pithom. The trustees were delighted; they touted Naville’s sensational discoveries in a loud voice, hoping for increased public support and more abundant funds. Although many Egyptologists refused to accept Naville’s conclusions, the public was convinced that modern archaeology had strengthened the authenticity of the Scriptures.17

  Naville was possessed, like so many early Egyptologists, with an extraordinary energy and capacity for hard work. He preferred to excavate large monuments and temples, for his training had been in the rather crude traditions of Mariette and Maspero. But he was a man of formidable intelligence and strong views whose work placed the Egypt Exploration Fund at the forefront of serious research organizations. His excavations at Wadi Tumilat in 1885–1886 and Bubastis in 1886–1889 were the subject of considerable interest.

  A broadly built, jolly man, Naville, although trained by the German Lepsius, detested the Teutonic ways of scholarship, with their detailed classifications and card indexes. He continued to work for the fund until 1913, training numerous young archaeologists, among them Howard Carter, the discoverer of Tutankhamun’s tomb.18

  ::

  The Germans as well as the British and French made important contributions to Egyptology in the late nineteenth century. Many German Egyptologists owed their early training not only to Karl Richard Lepsius but also to Georg Moritz Ebers (1837–1898), a professor of Egyptology at Leipzig. Ebers, a prolific writer on Egyptian subjects, was also an able teacher. But his great contribution was a series of popular historical novels with ancient Egyptian themes, the most famous of which, An Egyptian Princess (1864), was translated into sixteen languages and sold more than 400,000 copies by 1928. Ebers’s Egyptian princess was quite a character, courted by Cambyses, startlingly beautiful and sensitive, regal yet human, the perfect heroine for the suppressed maidens of his time. They could not fail to admire a princess whose “royal purple added to her beauty, the high flashing tiara made her slender, perfect figure seem taller than it really was.”19 Ebers made careful use of the narrative to introduce accurate descriptions of Egyptian artifacts and customs as background color. His florid romances were read by all lovesick young ladies at the turn of the century.

  Another German, Adolf Erman (1854–1937), director of Egyptian antiquities in the Berlin Museum, was a man whose influence on Egyptology has been described in Who Was Who in Egyptology as “cyclonic and the greatest since Champollion.” Erman, predominantly a philologist, altered the grammar and teaching of Egyptian linguistics to the extent that existing ideas on ancient Egyptian were completely revolutionized. He showed the relationship between ancient Egyptian and archaic Semitic languages; divided ancient Egyptian into Old, Middle, and Late versions; and was a pioneer in providing accurate interpretations and translations. Erman was a polymath of Egyptology, for he was interested in archaeology and history as well as languages. One of his most important works was Life in Ancient Egypt, a brilliant account of the ancient Egyptians that drew almost entirely on Egyptian sources and is still read today.20

  Many events conspired to bring archaeology in Egypt to the threshold of a dramatic change for the better. More Egyptologists now worked along the Nile than ever before, many of them engaged in copying and preservation work as much as excavation. Amelia Edwards toured the United States in 1889–1890, speaking about the work of the Egypt Exploration Fund and enlisting American support for the excavations. Her tour was a great success, her lectures well received. She went on to state confidently that there were more ancient Egyptians under the soil of Egypt than there were living people above it. Amelia Edwards lived long enough to witness the dawn of a new era in Egyptian excavation, in large part a direct result of her propaganda. Six years before her death, the Egypt Exploration Fund had engaged a young Englishman to excavate for them in the delta, an association that lasted but three years. The young man, Flinders Petrie, was destined to become one of the seminal figures in archaeological excavation in the Nile Valley.

  15

  Science and the Small Artifact

  The observation of the small things, universal at present, had never

  been attempted. The science of observation, of registration, of

  recording, was yet unthought of; nothing has a meaning unless it

  was an inscription or a sculpture.

  FLINDERS PETRIE,

  Seventy Years in Archaeology

  “It is really a deplorable thing that we are not better represented in Egyp
t which is now overrun by German and French students and professors. . . . The Germans push their people and are doing it more than before just because they see we are getting in the saddle.” Architect Somers Clarke reflected the feelings of many British Egyptologists of the 1890s. Britain ruled Egypt, but the French exercised almost complete control over the Antiquities Service, first under Auguste Mariette and Gaston Maspero, then under a series of unpopular directors: Eugène Grébaut, who had tangled with Wallis Budge; Victor Loret; and an engineer, Jacques de Morgan. None of these lasted long, so Lord Cromer prevailed on Maspero to return for a second stint, from 1899 to 1916.1

  After 1882, British military rule ensured a stable financial environment for the next three-quarters of a century and a stable level of funding for the Antiquities Service. Gaston Maspero was a skillful bureaucrat as well as a good Egyptologist, and was well aware of the nationalist tensions over archaeology. He courted the British with charm and sedulous care, ending Mariette’s arbitrary monopoly on excavation and encouraging excavators from many countries. The next thirty years were exciting ones for Egyptology, nourished by generous policies for sharing “duplicate” finds and relaxed supervision by Maspero, some of his successors, and then Maspero again. As Nicholas Reeves puts it: “This was to be Egyptology’s golden age—the era of Flinders Petrie and Wallis Budge, Theodore Davis, Lord Carnarvon and Howard Carter; a time of tourists and grandees, collectors and forgers, scholars, rogues and some of the greatest discoveries the world has ever seen.”2

  Maspero was especially solicitous of the Egypt Exploration Fund. He told them to excavate for purely scientific goals, without any ambitions for antiquities to take back to London. He in his turn “persuaded” the Egyptian government to give many of the finds to the excavators, despite loud protests in Cairo. Effectively, he gave Édouard-Henri Naville a free hand in Lower Egypt and set a precedent for sympathetic treatment of British researchers that endured, despite occasional controversies, until the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun in 1922.3

  Not that the fund’s first excavator was a paragon of archaeological virtue. He had little interest in small finds, preferring large-scale temple clearance to patient dissection of minor sites. But he was light-years ahead of many of his predecessors in terms of his site plans and records, even if they did not match up to modern standards. Naville was well aware of the great excavations at Olympia and elsewhere, where the Germans had renounced all claims to the finds and were digging in quest of information. He urged the fund to do the same, for he was sure that wealthy donors would be glad to pay for research that threw light on the Bible, especially in the delta with its close ties to the eastern Mediterranean world.4 The biblical associations of Tell el-Maskhuta delighted the fund’s supporters, even if Samuel Birch, among others, considered this “emotional archaeology.” The Egypt Exploration Fund’s expeditions became part of the Egyptian winter scene for decades. The fund also nurtured the career of a giant of Egyptology—Flinders Petrie.

  ::

  William Matthew Flinders Petrie (1853–1942) was born into a family with a long tradition of travel, casual scientific inquiry, and surveying. His homeschooling was at best casual; the young Petrie picked up an excellent practical knowledge of surveying and geometry from his father. He was soon walking around the English countryside, armed with his father’s sextant and a looking glass, plotting prehistoric earthworks. “I used to spend five shillings and sixpence a week on food, and beds cost about double that,” he wrote. “I learned the land and the people all over the south of England, usually sleeping in a cottage.”5 All this was invaluable experience for Petrie’s later life in the desert, as were his hours of browsing among coins and books in the British Museum.

  Both Petrie and his father had long nurtured a strong interest in the pyramids of Egypt, partly from reading the astronomer Charles Piazzi Smyth’s Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid, a notorious speculative work on pyramidology that the young Petrie bought by chance at the age of thirteen.6 Father and son planned an expedition to make a more detailed survey of the Great Pyramid than had ever been attempted before. They cut their teeth with Stonehenge in 1872, producing a plan that was the definitive effort for many years. Then Flinders Petrie left for Egypt in November 1880, embarking on a new life at the age of twenty-seven. To his great regret, his father never joined him on the Nile, preferring a quiet life of research and reflection at home. After a stormy passage, Petrie and his instruments arrived at Alexandria a month later. Within a week, he was comfortably ensconced in a rock tomb at the pyramid of Giza. Permits were no problem, since he had no plans to excavate, and he was thus independent of Mariette and the Egyptian Antiquities Service.

  Petrie’s two-year pyramid survey was a novel undertaking by Egyptological standards. He spent many weeks setting up accurate survey points and studying the construction of the pyramids. There was ample leisure time to observe the excavation methods of the redoubtable Mariette and his colleagues. He was severe in his denunciations:

  Mariette most rascally blasted to pieces all the fallen parts of the granite temple by a large gang of soldiers, to clear it out instead of lifting the stones and replacing them by means of tackle. Nothing seems to be done with any uniform and regular plan, work is begun and left unfinished; no regard is paid to future requirements of exploration, and no civilized or labor-saving devices are used. It is sickening to see the rate at which everything is being destroyed, and the little regard paid to preservation.7

  The Englishman’s survey work soon attracted attention among more serious archaeologists. Many visitors found their way to his sepulcher home, among them the great general Augustus Henry (Lane-Fox) PittRivers, a pioneer in meticulous excavations who strongly encouraged Petrie’s efforts.8 Petrie was particularly amused by the pyramid cranks and their measurements; one of them even tried to file down the granite to conform to his specifications. As he measured, Petrie relished the quiet life, walking around barefoot without the constraints of civilized life: “bells, collars, and cuffs.” He lived simply. His excavation camps were to become legendary for their austere conditions.

  In the intervals between surveying, he collected potsherds and small objects. Maspero told Petrie to take small objects through customs in his pockets, as they would not be searched. Perhaps it was just as well that Maspero was so casual, for Petrie was now convinced that the smaller objects, such as glazed pots, held some of the keys to ancient Egypt. This conviction, and the sickening destruction around him, persuaded Petrie that he should turn his attention from surveying to excavation.

  The Pyramids and Temples of Giza appeared in 1883 to favorable reviews. Everyone praised the author’s scientific objectivity, for his measurements placed knowledge of the pyramids on a new footing. Influential scholars urged the Egypt Exploration Fund to send Petrie to work in the Nile Delta. Late the same year, the fund’s committee dispatched him there. He wrote to Amelia Edwards: “The prospect of excavating in Egypt is a most fascinating one to me, and I hope the results may justify my undertaking such a work. I believe the true line lies as much in the careful noting and comparison of small details, as in more wholesale and offhand clearances.”9

  Egyptian archaeology was in a parlous state. Samuel Birch of the British Museum begged Petrie to bring back at least a box of pottery from each of the “great sites,” to use as a means of developing an Egyptian chronology. He was overwhelmed by the scale of the destruction, and felt that he should dig and dig and write everything up when he was sixty years old. Nothing had any meaning to the archaeologists of the day except an inscription or a sculpture. Precision was unknown, looting still commonplace.

  Petrie was soon back in Egypt, excavating at Tanis and other Late Period sites, including Naukratis, a site he found by a chance purchase of an archaic Greek statuette, where the whole ground was thick with early Greek pottery and he felt he was committing sacrilege by walking over heaps of potsherds with the fine, lustrous black ware crunching under his boots. Unlike most
of his predecessors, Petrie employed his laborers directly and housed them, to prevent blackmail by the headmen who wanted to act as intermediaries and force the men to pay them to let them work. He experienced minimal labor problems as a result. Mariette had used different methods, for the Frenchman had simply requisitioned laborers from local villages, leaving his foremen to collect the levies. So the foremen promptly drafted the richest villagers, who had to bribe them to be exempted. Eventually, the poorest laborers were hired compulsorily and marched off to work. Most local excavations were haphazard affairs. “An Arab’s notion of digging is to sink a circular pit, and lay about him with his pick hither and thither, and I have some trouble to make them run straight narrow trenches,” wrote Petrie. His own methods, while better, would horrify many modern archaeologists. There were three categories of worker: trenchers, shaft sinkers, and stone cleaners. A small gang of earth carriers supported each group. Petrie’s notion was to maintain better supervision of the labor force, although it is difficult to see how he achieved this. He even employed girls as pick workers. “One of them is rather a boisterous damsel, and how she paid out the old man she had to work with! She slanged him unlimitedly, and kept time to her tongue by banging him with her basket.”10