Methods & Aims in Archaeology

by W. M. Flinders Petrie

For an example of the nature of archaeological evidence it will be best to study the connections of Egypt with early Europe. This subject is not only a fascinating one historically, but it includes a great variety of different kinds of evidence,—from paintings, from groups found in tombs, from remains of palaces, from objects exactly dated by royal names, from objects dated by their nature and style; and evidence which is of various degrees of certainty. Moreover this evidence has been more actively and continually attacked than any other class of discoveries of late years, and hence the most that can be argued against it is well known.

In XXVIth Dynasty.

Until 1883 nothing was known of the Greeks in Egypt before the Ptolemaic age; the accounts of Herodotus about the Greek mercenaries, and their connection with the XXVIth Dynasty, stood solely as a literary statement, without a scrap of tangible evidence. At the close of that year I bought an archaic Greek statuette in Cairo ([Fig. 56]); and on enquiring about the source of it, I heard of Nebireh, and hunted out the site in the Western Delta. There I found the ground covered with archaic Greek pottery dating throughout the XXVIth Dynasty, and it was evident that a great Greek city had existed there. Next year, at the close of 1884, I began exploring it, and found on the first day there, a decree of the people of Naukratis. Here then the evidence of Greek occupation depended upon the presence of thousands of pieces of Greek pottery and sculpture; and to imagine that these had all been imported by Egyptians was beyond any possible supposition. A town containing almost entirely Greek remains, and with only clumsy imitations of Egyptian subjects, was certainly occupied by Greeks. And as there is no instance or probability of Greeks having imported great quantities of vases made in earlier times, this place contained good evidence for Greeks having lived there from the VIIth century B.C. As such it was generally accepted; but the dedication by the Naukratites was withheld from the public for six months by over-cautious authorities, for fear that something else might contradict it. This is a case where what was undoubtedly good evidence should rather have been stated at once, with a reservation that it was very improbable that the stone had been brought from another site, or dedicated anywhere except in Naukratis. The evidence of the pottery shewed that Naukratis dated from the middle of the VIIth century; and this agrees with the statement by Athenaeus that a statue was dedicated there in the 23rd Olympiad, 688 B.C.

In the next season, the spring of 1886, I went down to Defeneh, and there found a great mass of Greek pottery of the same period as that of Naukratis. Here again, then, the Greeks had inhabited the site; and the evidence was clear that this was a great camp of Greek mercenaries. The modern name Defeneh so closely agrees to the ancient Daphnae that no one hesitated to accept their equivalence. Here the identification rests, then, not on a contemporary inscription, but on a modern Arabic name.

Important evidence about the manufactures of these places is given by the pottery. Although the two sites were occupied at the same period by Ionian Greeks, yet the bulk of the pottery on one site differs from that on the other. The conclusion is that probably it was made locally by Greek potters, and not brought by traders from Greek towns, as trade would probably have imported from the same sources to both sites. The evidence here is from the difference of classes.

Another conclusion is drawn from the few varieties of painted pottery which are found in common at both sites. From the levels at which they were found at Naukratis these varieties were dated at various years between 610 and 550 B.C.; and such varieties were found together in a chamber at Defeneh with jar sealings bearing royal names of Psamtek II and Aahmes, and therefore dated between 595 and 565 B.C., as the Greeks were removed from the camp in the latter year. The evidence here is from the collocation of objects; those dated by the levels at which other things were found at Naukratis agreeing with those dated by mixture with Egyptian sealings at Defeneh.

The Greeks in Egypt.

Fig. 56. Warrior, in alabaster. Naukratis, XXVI Dyn.