Methods & Aims in Archaeology

by W. M. Flinders Petrie

Temples.

The nature of a site can be guessed pretty closely from its aspect. A wide open space with mounds around it is almost certainly a temple site; and if there are stone chips strewn over it, no doubt remains as to its nature (Figs. [6], [7]). The temples being of stone from the XIIth Dynasty onwards, they were ruined by the removal of the material in each age of disruption; but the houses of the towns, being always of mud brick, continually crumbled and decayed, and so filled up the ground with rubbish. In Egypt mud-brick towns accumulate at about 20 inches in a century; or in the rainy Syrian climate at about 50 inches. Herodotus describes walking on the roofs of the houses and seeing down into the temple precincts; and in every great site in Egypt, such as Tanis, Buto, Bubastis, Memphis, or Koptos, the plain of temple ruins had the house mounds far above it on all sides. The temples were ruined both for building-stone and for lime-burning. It is rare to get any portions of a limestone building left; sandstone is often found, and all the great temples which remain are of sandstone; granite generally has lasted, except where it has been split up in Roman times for millstones. The search for limestone has led to whole buildings being upset in order to extract the limestone foundations. The basalt pavement of Khufu, the granite pylon of Crocodilopolis, and probably the granite temple of Iseum, have been overthrown thus. Especially in the Delta, where no limestone hills are accessible, this destructive search for lime has been unrelenting in all ages; and it is seldom that ancient limestone is now met with. Hence all that can generally be seen of a temple site is a plain of dust with a few tumbled blocks of granite, the exposed tops of which are entirely weathered as rounded masses. Five or ten feet down there may be a rich harvest of carvings and inscriptions.

Fig. 8. Mounds of fort, Defeneh.

Fig. 9. Sarcophagi at Zuweleyn.

Towns.

A town site is always recognised ([Fig. 8]) by its mounds of crumbling mud brick, strewn with potsherds if in Upper Egypt, or with burnt red bricks on the later mounds of the Delta. Whenever a native begins to describe a site in Lower Egypt, one inquires if there is red brick, and if so there is no need to listen further. Generally it is possible to date the latest age of a town by the potsherds lying on the surface; and to allow a rate of growth of 20 inches a century down to the visible level; if that gives a long period we may further carry down the certainly artificial level by 4 inches in a century for the Nile deposits when in the cultivated ground. For instance, there are mounds in the Delta about 40 feet high, ending about 500 A.D.; this gives about 40 feet of rise, equal to about 2400 years, or say 2000 B.C., for the age at the present ground level. But the visible base was about 5 feet lower at 500 A.D.; and the human deposit rising at 20 inches a century has been overlaid at the rate of 4 inches a century by the Nile deposit. Hence the age may be reckoned by a depth of 45 feet accumulated at 16 inches a century before 500 A.D. or about 2900 B.C. No exact conclusion could be based on this; but it is a valuable clue to the age to which the yet unseen foundation of a town may most likely belong. Town mounds and ruins of buildings have generally symmetrical forms, weathered away uniformly on all sides. But around towns are often heaps of rubbish thrown out, the best-known example of this being the immense heaps behind Cairo; and such accumulations usually show their nature by the two slopes, the gradual walk-up slope, and the steep thrown-down slope.

Cemeteries.

The cemetery sites on the desert have always been more or less plundered anciently. A prehistoric site may have no external trace, as the blown sand may cover it so evenly that there is no suspicion of anything lying beneath. But on a gravel surface there are generally some indications left of the hollows of the graves, and scraps of broken pottery left about by the plunderers ([Fig. 9]). The historic cemeteries are generally easier to see, as they are in rising ground, and the holes of the tomb pits show on the surface. The difficulty is not to find the site of a cemetery, but to find a grave in it which still contains anything. As a rule, any tomb pit which appears still undisturbed has been left either because it belongs to an unfinished tomb with nothing in it, or because the tomb has already been reached from elsewhere. At Medum an untouched walling up of a chamber had been left, because the plunderers had tunnelled under the mass of the tomb and broken through the floor of the chamber. At Dendereh the floor of the chamber was entire, with the lid of the sarcophagus sunk in it, yet untouched; it had been left so because the plunderers had mined through from the outside under the floor to the sarcophagus, and broken through the side of it without touching the chamber. Some untouched tombs were left because the burials in them were known to be so poor that they were not worth opening. All this points to the plundering being mostly done during the lifetime of those who saw the burial. Usually only one tomb in ten contains anything noticeable; and it is only one in a hundred that repays the digging of the other ninety-nine.