Methods & Aims in Archaeology

by W. M. Flinders Petrie

A somewhat less certain dating is given by remains found in houses. At the palace of Akhenaten the definite date of its ruin fairly shews the Aegean pottery in it to be contemporary with his generation. In a house at Gurob, Aegean pottery was found with wood-carving of the XIXth Dynasty and a ring of the late XVIIIth Dynasty, and also under the walls of a house which was built at the close of the XVIIIth Dynasty. These are not precise datings, and are open to claims that the houses were later than the evidence shews; but such connections give a strong presumption.

Similar, but converse, evidence is given from the Greek side. At Mykenae was found a figure of a monkey in violet glaze (No. 4573 Athens); this is of Egyptian work and bears the name of Amenhotep II. A piece of glaze found in a building by the lion gate has the name of Amenhotep III. A scarab of Thyi, his queen, was found in the palace of Mykenae. And three large jars of drab-coloured Egyptian pottery (4569 Athens), such as is quite unknown from Greek sources, were also found at Mykenae. Now these examples prove the import of Egyptian things of the XVIIIth and XIXth Dynasties before the fall of Mykenae; they do not give an exact dating as their time-connection on the Greek side is unstated, and they might belong to any part of the history of the town. But their agreement in age gives a strong presumption that the latter half of the XVIIIth Dynasty was contemporary with some part of the flourishing period of foreign trade at Mykenae.

Scarabs.

At this point we should notice an assertion often made, that Egyptian objects, especially scarabs, often bore the names of kings who were earlier than the date of the manufacture. This is sometimes the case, and on this ground it has been attempted to discredit all evidence about scarabs. Now an exactly similar case occurs in Roman coinage, where at eight different periods restorations of coins of earlier emperors took place, no less than twenty emperors being thus commemorated. Yet no one has impugned the evidence of Roman coins in dating an excavation, on the ground that as some were restored therefore none are of certain value. Similarly seven kings restored the scarabs of earlier times, twelve different kings being thus commemorated; but that is no reason for discrediting the age of the remaining ninety-nine scarabs out of every hundred. The restorations, say of the XIIth Dynasty kings by Tahutmes III, are as obvious as the restorations of earlier emperors by Gallienus. No doubt to a person ignorant of coins the subject would seem uncertain and confused; but then scientific evidence is not expected to appeal to those who are ignorant of the subject, whether it be coins or scarabs. We must then credit the evidence of scarabs for dating, although there are some restored in a different style, and although some case might be found where a scarab had been reused at a much later date than that of its manufacture. Such exceptions are certainly not one per cent of the whole, and cannot therefore be invoked to explain away the whole of the instances.

Tombs in Egypt.

The largest class of evidence is that from collocation in tombs. The weak points of this are (1) reuse of tombs so that primary and secondary interments may be mixed; this should be obvious in any properly conducted excavation, and cannot be brought in as an hypothesis unless some mixture of date can be otherwise proved: (2) the tomb contents being older than the dated object, and so brought to too low a date, which is very unlikely, as a whole group of things would not be preserved for long together: (3) the dated object being older than the tomb, which is practically the only danger. A few rare examples have been seen of older objects being reburied, but so rarely that only a very small proportion of cases could be thus explained. The great majority of things in hand at any one time belong to within a generation or two. In our own time, although we treasure older things more than did the people of any past age, yet not one per cent of what we have is over a hundred years old. In late Roman coinage the waste was such that in a hundred years only an eighth survived in use, and in half a century more only a twenty-fifth remained. It is very rarely that beads or pendants of very different ages are mixed in ancient necklaces, or that scarabs of reigns far apart are buried together. I do not remember a mixture of more than two contiguous reigns in any group of scarabs that I have found. Hence this possibility of an older object being reused may occur rarely, but cannot be called upon in the whole of the cases, or even for any perceptible proportion of them. In certainly nine cases out of ten we must expect that a dated object was buried within less than two or three generations from its original period.

The tomb groups containing Aegean pottery are, it so happens, not so well dated as the burnt groups; and are therefore inferior to the burnt groups, both on this account, as well as by the greater possibility of mixture. The Maket tomb at Kahun is the principal example. The dated objects in that are of Tahutmes II and III; and though at first I supposed it to be of later age on the strength of some beads not then known before the XIXth or XXth Dynasty, yet as such beads were afterwards found in a deposit of Tahutmes III at Koptos, there is no reason for questioning that the whole is of his age. Also the experience of the past dozen years has shewn that such a date agrees well to all the other objects in the tomb. The absence of blue painted pottery does not imply a date after the disuse of it in the XXth Dynasty, but before that style came into use in the middle of the XVIIIth Dynasty. In this tomb was a fine Aegean vase ([Fig. 58]) with ivy-spray pattern, which is thus dated to about 1500 B.C. The burials were quite undisturbed and therefore the vase cannot belong to a later date, but might possibly be earlier.

Other examples have not this precise dating. At Kahun a burial in the open ground, and undisturbed, had scarabs and objects of the style of the middle or end of the XVIIIth Dynasty, with a stirrup vase from the Aegean (Kahun, p. 32). The undisturbed tomb at Gurob containing the beautiful wooden statuette of Res, certainly of the XVIIIth Dynasty, had in an opposite chamber a stirrup vase, which must have been buried at the same period. Another burial at Gurob had a piece of a stirrup vase with beads exactly like those of Ramessu II. And at Naqada a tomb which by the style of the painting, must have belonged to the beginning or middle of the XVIIIth Dynasty, had been so entirely plundered that the only object left was a fine globular stirrup vase. In these cases there is no exact dating, but a consensus of style in each case of the XVIIIth or early XIXth Dynasty; and the connection of the Aegean pottery with it is in some cases absolute and in others only presumptive. The argument for date of the pottery rests then in these cases on the uniformity of the period connected with it, and the absence of any discrepant dating.

Fig. 58.—Aegean vase of Tahutmes III. Maket tomb. 1:3.