0:00:07 > 0:00:09'Ancient Egypt -
0:00:09 > 0:00:14'a land of treasures, but also of tomb raiders, tourists
0:00:14 > 0:00:16'and traps in the dark.
0:00:17 > 0:00:21'I'm following in the footsteps of a Victorian adventurer
0:00:21 > 0:00:27'who took on the treasure hunters and won.'
0:00:27 > 0:00:30He's the man who measured the pyramids.
0:00:30 > 0:00:33He described how ancient Egyptians lived
0:00:33 > 0:00:36and discovered the world's oldest portraits.
0:00:40 > 0:00:44'He made sure that the legacy of ancient Egypt was not sold off,
0:00:44 > 0:00:48'but explained and understood.
0:00:48 > 0:00:51'He revolutionised the way we see the ancient world.
0:00:51 > 0:00:54'That man you have probably never heard of
0:00:54 > 0:00:57'is Flinders Petrie.'
0:00:57 > 0:01:01Petrie was probably the ideal type of archaeologist
0:01:01 > 0:01:05for a society to sponsor - very driven and very frugal.
0:01:05 > 0:01:08'Maverick, obsessive, eccentric -
0:01:08 > 0:01:12'he bestrode the world like a colossus.'
0:01:12 > 0:01:16He established archaeology as a science, and without him,
0:01:16 > 0:01:20Egyptology and archaeology would not be what they are today.
0:01:20 > 0:01:25We think of Flinders Petrie as one of the giants of archaeology, of the Middle East as a whole.
0:01:25 > 0:01:29All archaeologists working today
0:01:29 > 0:01:33stand on the shoulders of Sir Flinders Petrie.
0:01:50 > 0:01:52To an archaeologist like me,
0:01:52 > 0:01:55Flinders Petrie is a legendary figure.
0:01:55 > 0:01:59He's one of those giants in whose shadows we all walk.
0:02:03 > 0:02:05And "walk" is the word.
0:02:05 > 0:02:09He thought nothing of hiking 30 miles a day in baking desert heat
0:02:09 > 0:02:12searching for clues to a lost city.
0:02:12 > 0:02:17He left Britain every year to excavate, working obsessively from sunrise to sunset.
0:02:18 > 0:02:22'I want to find out what drove this extraordinary man,
0:02:22 > 0:02:26'and my search begins in southern England.
0:02:32 > 0:02:35'Flinders Petrie was born in Kent in 1853
0:02:35 > 0:02:38'to a Victorian middle-class family.
0:02:42 > 0:02:46'His father, William, recorded the day in his dairy.'
0:02:46 > 0:02:51This is William Petrie's journal entry for 3 June 1853.
0:02:51 > 0:02:56"5.45 to 5.55pm. Child born."
0:02:56 > 0:02:59William's added this beautiful sunburst illustration.
0:02:59 > 0:03:03Nothing like anything else in the journal.
0:03:03 > 0:03:07He was clearly delighted at the birth of his son.
0:03:12 > 0:03:16'Petrie's father was a surveyor and inventor.
0:03:16 > 0:03:19'His mother, Anne, spoke six languages
0:03:19 > 0:03:23'and wrote learned articles about mythology and scripture.
0:03:23 > 0:03:29'Flinders grew up in a Christian home where science and scholarship were celebrated too.
0:03:29 > 0:03:31'Flinders was just six
0:03:31 > 0:03:34'when Charles Darwin's theory of evolution was published,
0:03:34 > 0:03:38'making a huge impact on his god-fearing parents.
0:03:38 > 0:03:41'But there was always time for good clean fun.'
0:03:41 > 0:03:44Petrie's parents took him on healthy walking holidays
0:03:44 > 0:03:48to collect fossils and visit ancient monuments.
0:03:48 > 0:03:52But unlike most families, they measured these things.
0:03:52 > 0:03:56Petrie learned to survey the landscape and its ancient features,
0:03:56 > 0:03:59and to record the results with great accuracy -
0:03:59 > 0:04:02the key skills that would serve him well for life.
0:04:02 > 0:04:07'As a young man, Petrie was an accomplished surveyor.
0:04:07 > 0:04:11'At just 19, he measured Stonehenge with 100% accuracy.
0:04:11 > 0:04:17'Through his 20s he recorded many more of Britain's ancient monuments.
0:04:17 > 0:04:20'But like so many of his contemporaries,
0:04:20 > 0:04:24'his heart was drawn to ancient Egypt.
0:04:25 > 0:04:30'Egypt had been opened up half a century before Petrie was born,
0:04:30 > 0:04:32'when Napoleon invaded.'
0:04:33 > 0:04:37Napoleon failed to conquer Egypt in the late 18th century,
0:04:37 > 0:04:42but his campaign led to a surge of interest in Europe in all things Egyptian.
0:04:42 > 0:04:47'Egyptomania spread like wildfire in the 19th century,
0:04:47 > 0:04:51'inspiring great opera, like Verdi's Aida.
0:04:51 > 0:04:56'The death of Cleopatra became a Victorian obsession.
0:04:58 > 0:05:04'Aristocrats like Byron had their portraits painted in oriental dress.
0:05:04 > 0:05:08'Cities imported great obelisks, drawing huge crowds.
0:05:10 > 0:05:15'And national museums competed for the biggest and best statues.
0:05:18 > 0:05:22'Flinders Petrie was enthralled. He learned to read hieroglyphics.
0:05:22 > 0:05:26'He spent hours here in the British museum.
0:05:27 > 0:05:30'He had a burning desire to go to Egypt
0:05:30 > 0:05:35'and, at the age of 27, he made the journey
0:05:35 > 0:05:39'that would set the course of his life.
0:05:40 > 0:05:44'It took him two weeks to sail from Liverpool to Alexandria,
0:05:44 > 0:05:47'setting off in rough seas.
0:05:47 > 0:05:51'"I slept on the engine gratings as I was too ill to go below.
0:05:51 > 0:05:56'"I could not even touch a drop of water for nearly two days."
0:05:56 > 0:06:01'As soon as he set foot in Egypt, he made his way to the pyramids.
0:06:12 > 0:06:14'His mission was to survey them.
0:06:14 > 0:06:18'First, he needed a cheap place to live,
0:06:18 > 0:06:21'and so he found an empty rock tomb to rent.
0:06:21 > 0:06:25'This photo of Petrie's "tomb with a view" is famous among Egyptologists.
0:06:25 > 0:06:29'I'm the first one in living memory to find it!'
0:06:34 > 0:06:38Well! I've always wanted to see this tomb.
0:06:38 > 0:06:42It's been pretty difficult to find, but here we are.
0:06:42 > 0:06:47This is where he lived. It's a bit bigger than I thought it would be.
0:06:47 > 0:06:51It's two tombs broken into one, so he's got plenty of space.
0:06:51 > 0:06:55Plenty of light. There's not just one doorway. There are two.
0:06:55 > 0:06:58He's got a cavity over here,
0:06:58 > 0:07:01which he could have used for storing his supplies
0:07:01 > 0:07:03or some of his equipment.
0:07:03 > 0:07:07'Petrie was delighted with his new home.
0:07:07 > 0:07:11'He said, "No place is so equable in heat and cold
0:07:11 > 0:07:13'"as a room cut out in solid rock.
0:07:13 > 0:07:19'"It seems as good as a fire in cold weather, and deliciously cool in the heat."
0:07:19 > 0:07:23'Petrie was proud of his donkey-riding skills.
0:07:23 > 0:07:26'I don't know what he'd make of mine.'
0:07:30 > 0:07:32I just love coming here.
0:07:32 > 0:07:37But Petrie doesn't even record what he felt when he got to the site.
0:07:37 > 0:07:39He had a job to do.
0:07:39 > 0:07:44He was going to measure the pyramids.
0:07:44 > 0:07:46Petrie didn't work alone, of course.
0:07:46 > 0:07:52He hired a local man, Ali Gabri, who was hugely knowledgeable about the pyramids.
0:07:52 > 0:07:55The two of them worked together for two years.
0:07:55 > 0:07:59'Petrie wrote that they discussed science and philosophy,
0:07:59 > 0:08:01'"like two perfect gentlemen".
0:08:01 > 0:08:07'Their mission was to make the definitive survey of the tallest buildings in the world.
0:08:07 > 0:08:11'Just the two of them!
0:08:11 > 0:08:15'I thought I'd have a go with my colleague, Magdy.'
0:08:15 > 0:08:17We need to try and find...
0:08:17 > 0:08:23'Petrie had read outlandish theories linking pyramid design to the stars and the Bible.
0:08:23 > 0:08:27'These couldn't be tested, as there were no accurate measurements.
0:08:27 > 0:08:29'He was to change all that,
0:08:29 > 0:08:31'with his passion for measuring,
0:08:31 > 0:08:34'recording and classifying the world.'
0:08:42 > 0:08:47By the 1880s, when Petrie was here, Egypt was firmly on the tourist map.
0:08:47 > 0:08:51There are some wonderful photographs of Victorian tourists
0:08:51 > 0:08:57with starched collars and formal dress, despite the baking heat.
0:08:57 > 0:09:00To Petrie, of course, they were an irritation,
0:09:00 > 0:09:04but he had a strategy for keeping them away.
0:09:05 > 0:09:10Because it was so hot, he often stripped down to his underclothes.
0:09:10 > 0:09:14They were pink, so from a distance, it looked like he was naked.
0:09:17 > 0:09:19'And he didn't stop there.
0:09:19 > 0:09:22'He said of working inside the pyramids,
0:09:22 > 0:09:28"It was often most convenient to strip entirely for work, owing to heat and absence of current air."
0:09:30 > 0:09:33'Petrie's pyramid survey was a hit.
0:09:33 > 0:09:36'The Royal Society paid for its publication
0:09:36 > 0:09:40'and Petrie was the talk of the town in Egyptology.
0:09:40 > 0:09:42'Egypt was in political turmoil.
0:09:42 > 0:09:44'Petrie wrote in his journal
0:09:44 > 0:09:50'that if war broke out he could walk to Alexandria and get a boat home.
0:09:50 > 0:09:52'In the event, Britain waded in
0:09:52 > 0:09:56'to protect its trade route to India through the Suez Canal.
0:09:56 > 0:10:00'From 1882, Egypt was a part of the British Empire.
0:10:09 > 0:10:13'This smoothed the way for British Egyptologists, like Petrie.
0:10:13 > 0:10:18'He decided to devote his life to studying Egypt's history.
0:10:18 > 0:10:22'He despised the antique dealers and tomb raiders
0:10:22 > 0:10:26'who vandalised ancient sites in search of profit.'
0:10:28 > 0:10:31He was so upset about this that he wrote,
0:10:31 > 0:10:34"A year's work in Egypt made me feel it was like a house on fire,
0:10:34 > 0:10:37"so rapid was the destruction going on.
0:10:37 > 0:10:43"My duty was that of a salvage man, to get all I could quickly gathered in."
0:10:43 > 0:10:49That's what he would do, but before he could get on with this salvage work, he needed somebody to fund it.
0:10:49 > 0:10:52That somebody was Amelia Edwards.
0:10:54 > 0:10:57'Her best-selling book, A Thousand Miles Up The Nile,
0:10:57 > 0:11:01'was a plea to the world to preserve the splendours of Egypt.
0:11:03 > 0:11:07'She put her campaign into action by forming a society
0:11:07 > 0:11:10'to explore and research ancient Egypt.
0:11:12 > 0:11:16'Amelia Edwards' society was to launch Petrie's career.
0:11:16 > 0:11:22'It still exists today and I'm now the Director.
0:11:22 > 0:11:25'One of our trustees is Margaret Mountford.'
0:11:25 > 0:11:29- Hi, Chris. How are you?- Fine. How are you? All right, thank you.
0:11:29 > 0:11:34So, Amelia Edwards. Without Amelia, we wouldn't be here.
0:11:34 > 0:11:39No. She must have been an amazing woman. She visited Egypt once!
0:11:39 > 0:11:43I think it was about 1872, 1873, and she realised that a lot of work
0:11:43 > 0:11:47needed to be done to preserve for posterity what was still there.
0:11:47 > 0:11:54She set about raising money and formed a society to fund excavations in the delta. Phenomenal!
0:11:54 > 0:11:58So it's really energy and enthusiasm she needed to get money.
0:11:58 > 0:12:03She was quite fortunate in her timing because there was interest,
0:12:03 > 0:12:08then, about the Book of Exodus, and the route that was taken.
0:12:08 > 0:12:11She badgered people in the British Museum.
0:12:11 > 0:12:15They must have been fed up with her, but good for her.
0:12:15 > 0:12:19It's a lot of hard work today to get people to provide money, as we know!
0:12:19 > 0:12:23- Same problem!- Same problem! But she was really driven.
0:12:25 > 0:12:28'In 1883, the Egypt Exploration Society
0:12:28 > 0:12:33'had the funds to sent Petrie to excavate Tanis, in the Nile delta.
0:12:33 > 0:12:38'It's what he'd always dreamed of - his own ancient site to himself.'
0:12:48 > 0:12:52I'm in Tanis, which looks pretty much as it did in Petrie's time -
0:12:52 > 0:12:54a great ruin field.
0:12:54 > 0:12:583,000 years ago, this was the northern capital of Egypt.
0:13:00 > 0:13:05'Petrie wanted to understand the past and its inhabitants.
0:13:05 > 0:13:11'He wrote of Tanis, "The low mounds of the cities of the dead show that this was once a living land,
0:13:11 > 0:13:15'"whose people prospered on the Earth."
0:13:15 > 0:13:20'You don't get that sort of poetry in archaeological reports today!'
0:13:23 > 0:13:25He was determined to be different
0:13:25 > 0:13:28from explorers who removed beautiful objects
0:13:28 > 0:13:32without bothering to understand how they fitted into Egyptian history.
0:13:32 > 0:13:36Here at Tanis, he pioneered a new way of working,
0:13:36 > 0:13:40methods that underpin modern field archaeology.
0:13:40 > 0:13:45At Tanis, Petrie established the ground rules we use today.
0:13:45 > 0:13:49When you excavate a site, you can't put it back together,
0:13:49 > 0:13:52so anything you don't record is lost for ever.
0:13:52 > 0:13:56It seems obvious now, but then, it was revolutionary.
0:13:56 > 0:14:01He instructed his men, boys and girls to excavate carefully,
0:14:01 > 0:14:03to dig down layer by layer.
0:14:03 > 0:14:07He recorded every stone, copied every inscription
0:14:07 > 0:14:09and photographed every object.
0:14:09 > 0:14:12Nothing was insignificant.
0:14:12 > 0:14:15This was the essence of Petrie's mission.
0:14:15 > 0:14:21He wanted to understand the whole picture, to get to grips with an entire ancient civilisation.
0:14:21 > 0:14:25He loathed treasure hunters and tomb raiders who made no attempt
0:14:25 > 0:14:27to understand what they found.
0:14:27 > 0:14:31Raging, he wrote, "Spoiling the past has an acute moral wrong in it."
0:14:34 > 0:14:36'The British Museum was surprised
0:14:36 > 0:14:41'at some of the gifts it received from Petrie,
0:14:41 > 0:14:44'including the contents of a burnt house.'
0:14:44 > 0:14:46Petrie was very much a pioneer
0:14:46 > 0:14:51in excavating houses and recording where the objects had come from,
0:14:51 > 0:14:56which can tell us so much about day-to-day life.
0:14:56 > 0:15:01Unlike other excavators, he wasn't just collecting the beautiful -
0:15:01 > 0:15:03nice statue, nice blue vessel -
0:15:03 > 0:15:06but also unimpressive looking things.
0:15:06 > 0:15:11This mass of material that's corroded almost beyond recognition -
0:15:11 > 0:15:14nails and pins and other metal objects.
0:15:14 > 0:15:18This is a corroded coal pot, in which you'd have had eye make-up.
0:15:18 > 0:15:23- There's some organic material here. - Very unusual for this period.
0:15:23 > 0:15:26Petrie was pioneering in giving find numbers
0:15:26 > 0:15:28and collecting the unattractive,
0:15:28 > 0:15:31but to have a sample of ancient grain
0:15:31 > 0:15:36that has been burnt in the fire that destroyed the house is fantastic.
0:15:36 > 0:15:41That can tell us a little bit about what they might have been eating.
0:15:41 > 0:15:46'It was easy for Petrie to raise funds for the next three digs.
0:15:46 > 0:15:51'Everyone wanted to find evidence for the Biblical story of Exodus.
0:15:52 > 0:15:54'He grew increasingly confident.
0:15:54 > 0:15:57'While he remained friends with Amelia,
0:15:57 > 0:16:00'he resented the interference of her committee.
0:16:00 > 0:16:04'They considered him high-handed and arrogant, and in 1886,
0:16:04 > 0:16:07'tensions grew to breaking point.'
0:16:10 > 0:16:14His expenses were questioned, even though he lived like a hermit.
0:16:14 > 0:16:19He was sick of being told how to run an excavation by bureaucrats.
0:16:19 > 0:16:22Petrie bellowed he'd rather go into chemistry
0:16:22 > 0:16:26and foreswear Egypt altogether than have anything more to do with them.
0:16:26 > 0:16:30His resignation was accepted behind Amelia Edwards' back.
0:16:30 > 0:16:34She was furious, but powerless to change the decision.
0:16:36 > 0:16:38'Petrie had to consider his future.
0:16:38 > 0:16:41'Without funding, he couldn't excavate.
0:16:41 > 0:16:43'He was glad to accept a commission
0:16:43 > 0:16:47'from the British Association for the Advancement of Science
0:16:47 > 0:16:49'that took him back up the Nile.
0:16:55 > 0:16:58'He was assisting their research on human evolution
0:16:58 > 0:17:01'and racial differences.
0:17:04 > 0:17:09'His task was to take photographs at temples like the Ramesseum,
0:17:09 > 0:17:13'of carved images of the mighty ancient Egyptians
0:17:13 > 0:17:15'and their inferior enemies.'
0:17:30 > 0:17:36The Egyptians were keen on showing their supremacy over other foreign races that inhabited their world
0:17:36 > 0:17:40by depicting them as vanquished foes,
0:17:40 > 0:17:43tied up, ready to be smited, beaten with sticks,
0:17:43 > 0:17:45their arms tied behind their heads.
0:17:45 > 0:17:50They wanted to show the Egyptians were better than everyone else.
0:17:51 > 0:17:54'This is a very rare copy of Racial Types,
0:17:54 > 0:17:59'Petrie's published photographs of Canaanites, Assyrians and Libyans,
0:17:59 > 0:18:01'the enemies of ancient Egypt.
0:18:05 > 0:18:07'The man behind the commission
0:18:07 > 0:18:10'was Francis Galton, a human biologist
0:18:10 > 0:18:15'who was fascinated by Petrie's brilliant mathematical mind.
0:18:15 > 0:18:17'Galton was Charles Darwin's cousin
0:18:17 > 0:18:22'and shared his interest in the survival of the fittest.'
0:18:22 > 0:18:26Why did Galton want Petrie to take these photographs?
0:18:26 > 0:18:29Galton was obsessed with the human face.
0:18:29 > 0:18:33He thought that the characteristics would show you
0:18:33 > 0:18:36the kind of person that you were.
0:18:36 > 0:18:40He took photographs of people in asylums, and he thought that,
0:18:40 > 0:18:44by looking at these faces and drawing up inheritance -
0:18:44 > 0:18:48the idea that characteristics pass from generation to generation -
0:18:48 > 0:18:52you would know what kind of person somebody was,
0:18:52 > 0:18:55whether they were likely to be a criminal.
0:18:55 > 0:18:59He also coined the word "eugenics". This is the idea of inheritance.
0:18:59 > 0:19:05Features are inherited, but he thought our moral characteristics could be inherited, too.
0:19:05 > 0:19:07What was Petrie's involvement?
0:19:07 > 0:19:11- Was he interested in eugenics as well?- Absolutely.
0:19:11 > 0:19:14There was very much an interest in racial groups,
0:19:14 > 0:19:18how they mingled, how they didn't mingle.
0:19:18 > 0:19:23So he takes the photographs for Galton and his committee
0:19:23 > 0:19:26and it follows him all the way through his life.
0:19:29 > 0:19:33'Throughout his career, Petrie sent skeletons, skulls and bones
0:19:33 > 0:19:36'to Galton's London laboratory for measurement
0:19:36 > 0:19:40'and study on their meaning for the history of civilisation.
0:19:43 > 0:19:46'Petrie was soon excavating again, now with private funding.
0:19:46 > 0:19:48'In 1888, at Hawara,
0:19:48 > 0:19:51'he made a remarkable discovery.
0:19:54 > 0:19:58'Petrie was looking for the royal burial inside the pyramid,
0:19:58 > 0:20:02'but what he found at its base was a Roman-period cemetery
0:20:02 > 0:20:04'full of mummies.
0:20:13 > 0:20:15'Petrie found himself staring
0:20:15 > 0:20:20'into lifelike faces of Egyptians from the time of Cleopatra.
0:20:28 > 0:20:32'At the Cairo Museum, Yasmin el Shazly introduced me.'
0:20:32 > 0:20:37- Yasmin, tell me what we have here. - OK. This is a Roman mummy,
0:20:37 > 0:20:40discovered by Petrie in Hawara.
0:20:40 > 0:20:44It's obviously the mummy of a woman, and it's absolutely gorgeous.
0:20:44 > 0:20:47- It's intact. - It is incredibly well preserved.
0:20:47 > 0:20:50You can see the painted sandals.
0:20:50 > 0:20:55You can see the portrait, which is beautifully painted.
0:20:55 > 0:21:00You can see the jewellery, the hairstyle.
0:21:00 > 0:21:04You can date the portrait because of what she's wearing.
0:21:04 > 0:21:07It's like now, what's in fashion.
0:21:07 > 0:21:11- She wearing the latest styles.- Yes. - You can say exactly when it's from.
0:21:11 > 0:21:15This is actually intended to show this lady as she was.
0:21:15 > 0:21:19- When she was alive. Yes.- Incredible.
0:21:19 > 0:21:23'The painted wooden faces are the earliest known portraits.
0:21:23 > 0:21:28'Some are displayed as portraits, separated from their mummies.'
0:21:28 > 0:21:31- Wow!- They look amazing, don't they?
0:21:31 > 0:21:35- Absolutely beautiful. - You see children.
0:21:35 > 0:21:39- For example, that child looks very sad.- He does!
0:21:39 > 0:21:44- As opposed to that child.- Who seems quite contented, very happy.
0:21:44 > 0:21:48- They don't look very Egyptian. - No, they don't.
0:21:48 > 0:21:51But actually, the function is very Egyptian.
0:21:51 > 0:21:55They served the same function as the mummy mask.
0:21:55 > 0:22:00Some people still chose to have mummy masks produced for them.
0:22:00 > 0:22:03Why exactly?
0:22:03 > 0:22:06Was it cheaper to produce than the masks?
0:22:06 > 0:22:10Or less labour-intensive? I don't know.
0:22:10 > 0:22:13A different way for some people to achieve the same thing.
0:22:13 > 0:22:16The function is the same.
0:22:16 > 0:22:19'Many Hawara mummies came to Britain
0:22:19 > 0:22:22'and are on display in the British Museum.
0:22:22 > 0:22:28'In 1888, the public clamoured to see them and to buy them,
0:22:28 > 0:22:31'so Petrie and his sponsors made a lot of money.
0:22:34 > 0:22:40'Petrie started to receive offers of work beyond Egypt.
0:22:40 > 0:22:42'He was invited to dig at Lachish,
0:22:42 > 0:22:46'an Old Testament city mistakenly identified as Tell el-Hesy,
0:22:46 > 0:22:49'30 miles southwest of Jerusalem.
0:22:49 > 0:22:53'He arrived in March 1890.
0:22:53 > 0:22:56'Petrie was about to initiate archaeology
0:22:56 > 0:22:59'in this promised land of Egyptian conquests and Biblical stories.'
0:22:59 > 0:23:03Although the Victorians were interested in the Bible lands,
0:23:03 > 0:23:07everything they knew came from written sources.
0:23:07 > 0:23:11Petrie was to be the first person to excavate ancient Palestine.
0:23:14 > 0:23:20'I met Jeff Blakely of Wisconsin University, the archaeologist now in charge of Tell el-Hesy.'
0:23:20 > 0:23:22Petrie has been part of my life
0:23:22 > 0:23:24for 40 years.
0:23:24 > 0:23:31I honestly feel more at home around here than most places in the world.
0:23:34 > 0:23:37'Petrie realised that a tell is a manmade mountain,
0:23:37 > 0:23:40'built over thousands of years of habitation.
0:23:40 > 0:23:43'Digging down takes you through the history of the place.'
0:23:43 > 0:23:48- This is it?- This is it. We're there.- There it is.
0:23:48 > 0:23:50We see all the green fields.
0:23:50 > 0:23:53This is what he would have seen, except the trees.
0:23:53 > 0:23:56It would have been a stark landscape.
0:23:56 > 0:23:59Why did Petrie come here to work?
0:23:59 > 0:24:02The Palestine Exploration Fund
0:24:02 > 0:24:07wanted to excavate an archaeological site that would be a Biblical site.
0:24:07 > 0:24:14What they expected to find was what the houses looked like and things like that,
0:24:14 > 0:24:17but also they expected to find tablets.
0:24:17 > 0:24:21The tablets would tell you what daily life was like in the Bible.
0:24:21 > 0:24:23- It would be very convenient. - It would be!
0:24:23 > 0:24:28So anybody studying the Bible would have new sources of information
0:24:28 > 0:24:31about what happened in the Biblical period.
0:24:31 > 0:24:35- What did Petrie find here? - What he found was pottery.
0:24:35 > 0:24:39As you look at it, you see that it's almost vertical.
0:24:39 > 0:24:45It's 120 feet from the bottom to the top of the site.
0:24:45 > 0:24:50He was able to see that there's 60 feet of human occupation
0:24:50 > 0:24:52- spanning 2,500 or more years.- Wow!
0:24:54 > 0:25:00'In just six weeks, Petrie laid the foundations of archaeology in Palestine.
0:25:08 > 0:25:12'Down a back street in London, the Palestine Exploration Fund
0:25:12 > 0:25:16'holds Petrie's photographs of Tell el-Hesy.
0:25:18 > 0:25:22'Rupert Chapman and Felicity Cobbing showed me the collection.'
0:25:22 > 0:25:26In some ways, this site lends itself really well to photography.
0:25:26 > 0:25:29These photographs are fantastic.
0:25:29 > 0:25:35That's right. He built his own camera, and the first one he made
0:25:35 > 0:25:39was out of a biscuit tin.
0:25:39 > 0:25:42He didn't like lenses,
0:25:42 > 0:25:45because they introduce a distortion.
0:25:45 > 0:25:48So he used a pinhole camera,
0:25:48 > 0:25:53which gives you absolutely correct images, not distorted at all.
0:25:53 > 0:25:57He was having to do all this in the field, we have to remember.
0:25:57 > 0:26:01He's in the middle of the desert on an archaeological site
0:26:01 > 0:26:04with no back-up, he's doing this himself.
0:26:04 > 0:26:11Yes. You had problems with getting enough water to wash the plates
0:26:11 > 0:26:14after you had photographed them and developed them.
0:26:14 > 0:26:21And to, um... to make sure that you got rid of all the developer.
0:26:21 > 0:26:25And also problems with the water being full of bits of dirt,
0:26:25 > 0:26:30which would get into your emulsion and spoil the picture.
0:26:30 > 0:26:35'There was more to Petrie's photography than archaeological recording.'
0:26:35 > 0:26:36Wow!
0:26:36 > 0:26:42Petrie used the camera and photography to...advertise his work,
0:26:42 > 0:26:46to bring in the money to fund his work.
0:26:46 > 0:26:50Here we have 12 camerascopic views.
0:26:50 > 0:26:53On the back of each of these photographs...
0:26:53 > 0:26:54Ah!
0:27:01 > 0:27:04- Now, let's come to the device itself.- Oh, right.
0:27:04 > 0:27:10You take your stereo view of Sir Flinders hard at work.
0:27:10 > 0:27:12Drop it in.
0:27:12 > 0:27:14And voila!
0:27:14 > 0:27:17- It comes to life. - Let me have a go on this.
0:27:17 > 0:27:20Oh, my goodness! Wow!
0:27:20 > 0:27:23It really works. There he is in 3D.
0:27:25 > 0:27:27- That's incredible.- Rupert.
0:27:27 > 0:27:30That's incredible!
0:27:30 > 0:27:32Oh, yes!
0:27:32 > 0:27:36Even the background and everything is all in 3D.
0:27:36 > 0:27:40It's the closest that we'll ever be
0:27:40 > 0:27:43to actually being in the room with him.
0:27:43 > 0:27:46You have a wonderful beard.
0:27:46 > 0:27:49LAUGHTER
0:27:50 > 0:27:53'After his brief interlude in Palestine,
0:27:53 > 0:27:56'Petrie shuttled between Britain and Egypt,
0:27:56 > 0:28:03'raising funds and being drawn into furious debates on how best to preserve the ancient monuments.
0:28:06 > 0:28:10'He said, "Every time I come back to England,
0:28:10 > 0:28:15'"I'm more disgusted with the merciless rush and the turmoil of strife for money.
0:28:15 > 0:28:20'"The writhing and wriggling of the maggoty world is loathsome."
0:28:21 > 0:28:23'He had to return to Britain
0:28:23 > 0:28:27'every year to publish his discoveries, raise funds
0:28:27 > 0:28:29'and touch base with his mentor.'
0:28:31 > 0:28:35In 1892, Amelia Edwards died suddenly, aged 61,
0:28:35 > 0:28:37after a short illness.
0:28:37 > 0:28:43Her friendship with Petrie had lasted only eight years, but she changed his life.
0:28:43 > 0:28:46And now, in death, she secured his future.
0:28:51 > 0:28:53'She left money to UCL,
0:28:53 > 0:28:58'University College London, to fund a new academic post.
0:28:58 > 0:29:01'Only one candidate was suitable - Flinders Petrie.'
0:29:03 > 0:29:07He was Britain's first Professor of Egyptology and Philology.
0:29:07 > 0:29:12For the first time, he had a permanent base, here at UCL.
0:29:12 > 0:29:15It was the perfect job for him.
0:29:15 > 0:29:19He'd spend half his year teaching and the rest on excavation.
0:29:21 > 0:29:25'Petrie developed the first degree course in archaeology,
0:29:25 > 0:29:32'insisting that students combined theory with practice, by joining him on excavations.
0:29:32 > 0:29:34'UCL was THE place to study.
0:29:34 > 0:29:40'Petrie trained many of the 20th century's greatest archaeologists.
0:29:40 > 0:29:45'He also decided to train up a work force in Egypt,
0:29:45 > 0:29:48'and he was extremely successful.
0:29:50 > 0:29:54'On archaeological sites across Egypt today, the most skilled people
0:29:54 > 0:29:58'are direct descendants of workers trained by Flinders Petrie.
0:29:58 > 0:30:02'Ali Farouk has been the chief supervisor
0:30:02 > 0:30:06'at this Italian excavation near Luxor for 15 years.
0:30:10 > 0:30:15'Ali's great-great-grandfather came from this rural village, Quft,
0:30:15 > 0:30:20'where the new Professor Petrie excavated in 1893.
0:30:20 > 0:30:24'Almost all the Quftis work in archaeology today.'
0:30:28 > 0:30:31- KNOCKS ON DOOR - Salaam.
0:30:31 > 0:30:35- How are you? - I'm delighted to see you.
0:30:35 > 0:30:38- This is Ali, my brother. - Salaam...
0:30:38 > 0:30:44'Ali's brother, Omar, also works as a chief supervisor on archaeological digs.
0:30:44 > 0:30:47'They're deeply proud of their Qufti family history.'
0:30:47 > 0:30:52- You've been involved in archaeology for a long time, this family?- Yes.
0:30:52 > 0:30:56- How many of you are involved? - My family... A lot of family.
0:30:56 > 0:30:59- 100 people, maybe 200 people. - Really?
0:30:59 > 0:31:02- Yes. Sure. - All work in archaeology.- Yes.
0:31:02 > 0:31:07And they have, like, 30 house here, 35 house.
0:31:07 > 0:31:11- All belonging to your family? - Yes. From this village.
0:31:11 > 0:31:15I show you something. You'll like it. It's very nice.
0:31:15 > 0:31:18Wow! This looks very old.
0:31:18 > 0:31:20Yes, it's very old.
0:31:20 > 0:31:24I'm sorry. Who was it who used this?
0:31:24 > 0:31:28- A member of your family? - Yes. He's my grand-grandfather...
0:31:28 > 0:31:32Oh, your great-grandfather who worked with Petrie!
0:31:32 > 0:31:35- This is the stick he used when he was with Petrie.- Yes.
0:31:35 > 0:31:37That's incredible.
0:31:37 > 0:31:40What did he use this stick for?
0:31:40 > 0:31:43SHOUTS
0:31:43 > 0:31:47- Just to keep the workmen... - Not hit the workmen, only scare.- OK.
0:31:47 > 0:31:51My family, he said before he die, "Not to hurt the worker."
0:31:51 > 0:31:55You use this stick as a sign of authority.
0:31:55 > 0:31:58- It shows that you are in charge. - Exactly.
0:31:58 > 0:32:01- Exactly the same as when Petrie was working.- Yes.
0:32:03 > 0:32:09'When Petrie began to train his workforce, he was the leading figure in world archaeology.
0:32:14 > 0:32:18'He had made the definitive survey of the pyramids,
0:32:18 > 0:32:21'developed excavation techniques, pioneered photography
0:32:21 > 0:32:25'and developed the academic discipline.
0:32:26 > 0:32:30'Petrie worked closely with the Egyptian antiquities authorities
0:32:30 > 0:32:34'and helped to build the Cairo Museum collection.'
0:32:37 > 0:32:42The museum has over 1,000 objects that were discovered by Petrie.
0:32:42 > 0:32:47Among them are some of the most important objects in the museum,
0:32:47 > 0:32:52like the Merneptah Victory Stele, also known as the Israel Stele.
0:32:54 > 0:32:58'This granite stele is Petrie's most famous discovery.
0:32:58 > 0:33:02'It displays an inscription by the 13th-century King Merneptah,
0:33:02 > 0:33:05'celebrating his victory over Israel.
0:33:05 > 0:33:09'It's the only mention of Israel in any ancient Egyptian document.
0:33:14 > 0:33:18'This ivory statue is the only known image of Khufu,
0:33:18 > 0:33:22'the great pyramid builder, and it's just seven centimetres high.
0:33:22 > 0:33:26'Petrie promised the workman who found the broken body a huge fee
0:33:26 > 0:33:31'if he could find the head, which, after three weeks' sieving, he did.
0:33:35 > 0:33:40'Petrie was painted in front of the Ramesseum in 1895,
0:33:40 > 0:33:45'a hero of the British Empire surrounded by half-naked Egyptians.'
0:33:46 > 0:33:51The painting of Henry Wallis, I think, is very racist.
0:33:51 > 0:33:53Very colonial.
0:33:53 > 0:33:58It gives the impression that the Egyptian workmen were more like slaves.
0:33:58 > 0:34:00Petrie holding a cane,
0:34:00 > 0:34:04giving the impression that he was beating them to work harder.
0:34:04 > 0:34:08Which wasn't the case, and we know for a fact
0:34:08 > 0:34:12that Petrie had good relations with the locals that he worked with.
0:34:12 > 0:34:17'Popular with his workers, but not so popular with women.
0:34:17 > 0:34:23'Petrie was now in his 40s, but he seems to have been a celibate bachelor
0:34:23 > 0:34:27'until Hilda Urlin walked into his life in 1896.
0:34:27 > 0:34:31'She came to University College London to draw Egyptian costumes.'
0:34:35 > 0:34:37Petrie fell for her at once.
0:34:37 > 0:34:40He was 43 and she was only 25.
0:34:40 > 0:34:46Growing up in the Sussex countryside, she loved cycling, swimming and walking.
0:34:46 > 0:34:49She was an avid reader and collector of geological specimens.
0:34:49 > 0:34:53She was strong-minded from an intellectual family.
0:34:53 > 0:34:56In fact, she could have been made for Petrie.
0:34:58 > 0:35:00'Flinders proposed.
0:35:00 > 0:35:03'Hilda was reticent about the gap in age and status,
0:35:03 > 0:35:06'but agreed to become Mrs Petrie.
0:35:06 > 0:35:08'They were married in November 1897.
0:35:08 > 0:35:14'Within hours, they were at Victoria to catch the boat train to Egypt.
0:35:16 > 0:35:18'Hilda adored Egypt.
0:35:18 > 0:35:23'She said it was a delicious medley of Biblical and Arabian Nights pictures.
0:35:23 > 0:35:30'"I shall never forget the narrow Arab alleys of tiny shops full of gorgeous stuffs and scarlet slippers
0:35:30 > 0:35:33'"and red and orange dates and pomegranates."
0:35:39 > 0:35:44'Hilda loved the digger's life and became indispensable to Petrie.
0:35:54 > 0:35:58'She got on well with Petrie's right-hand man,
0:35:58 > 0:36:01'Ali es Suefi, who worked with them for 30 years.
0:36:01 > 0:36:05'She learned Arabic and embraced camp life.
0:36:05 > 0:36:09'Petrie had no problem with women and welcomed female students.
0:36:09 > 0:36:12'If they could do the job, that was fine with him.
0:36:13 > 0:36:17'His only condition was not to expect luxury.'
0:36:17 > 0:36:21Anyone going to work on a Petrie dig knew what they were in for -
0:36:21 > 0:36:24long hours, hard beds and terrible food.
0:36:24 > 0:36:28If there were supplies left over at the end of the season,
0:36:28 > 0:36:31he'd bury them, then dig them up the next year.
0:36:36 > 0:36:41He had a novel way of finding out if his tins of food were good to eat.
0:36:42 > 0:36:45Any that didn't explode would be fine.
0:36:45 > 0:36:51'However eccentric he was, there was no doubt about his serious mission,
0:36:51 > 0:36:55'to record as much of ancient Egypt as possible.
0:36:55 > 0:37:00'For years, Petrie searched for the origins of the mighty Egyptian race.
0:37:00 > 0:37:05'Now, at site north of Luxor, he was finally rewarded.
0:37:08 > 0:37:12'He found unusual burials with skeletons in foetal positions,
0:37:12 > 0:37:16'their faces to the west, following Egyptian custom,
0:37:16 > 0:37:20'but with none of the usual objects nearby.'
0:37:21 > 0:37:26With these discoveries, Petrie took us further back into pre-history.
0:37:26 > 0:37:28These objects -
0:37:28 > 0:37:34flint, stone vases, ivories - which give us no writing at all,
0:37:34 > 0:37:39are the evidence for a civilisation in Egypt before the first dynasty.
0:37:39 > 0:37:44'Petrie realised they pre-dated the dynasties of the Pharaohs,
0:37:44 > 0:37:48'but he thought that they were a new race from across the Red Sea.
0:37:48 > 0:37:53'Later, he accepted that they were just prehistoric Egyptians.
0:37:53 > 0:37:58'The burial objects were impossible to date without writing.
0:37:58 > 0:38:00'Petrie came up with the solution.'
0:38:03 > 0:38:05Mm. That's good.
0:38:05 > 0:38:09A nice cup of tea in a plain white mug.
0:38:09 > 0:38:11If I'd been here 50 years ago,
0:38:11 > 0:38:15I might have been drinking out of something more like this.
0:38:15 > 0:38:17If I'd been here 100 years ago,
0:38:17 > 0:38:21it might have been something more like this.
0:38:21 > 0:38:27Petrie seized on this idea that pottery design changes over time.
0:38:27 > 0:38:31Of course, wherever you excavate, you find masses of pottery
0:38:31 > 0:38:34of all different periods.
0:38:34 > 0:38:37Petrie realised that if you can date the pottery,
0:38:37 > 0:38:41you can also date the objects that are buried with it.
0:38:43 > 0:38:46'You can walk through prehistoric Egypt
0:38:46 > 0:38:51'by looking at the pottery Petrie collected from those early burials.
0:38:51 > 0:38:54'His brilliance was to put millions of pieces of pottery
0:38:54 > 0:38:56'into chronological order.
0:38:56 > 0:39:00'To find out how he did it, I asked Professor Stephen Quirke.'
0:39:00 > 0:39:03He's the first person who sees,
0:39:03 > 0:39:08if you go to a site and look over all the finds in general,
0:39:08 > 0:39:10you know them in general,
0:39:10 > 0:39:14you know roughly which are the main types of pottery.
0:39:14 > 0:39:17So you can track each of those main types
0:39:17 > 0:39:20as it is changing in time together.
0:39:20 > 0:39:22You can do a wonderful chart,
0:39:22 > 0:39:26where you put all of those separate types of pottery
0:39:26 > 0:39:29changing over time in columns.
0:39:29 > 0:39:32And, hey presto! That is what he manages to do!
0:39:32 > 0:39:36You get this beautiful visual chart, published in 1901.
0:39:36 > 0:39:38He doesn't have an absolute date,
0:39:38 > 0:39:42but he knows these at the left end are coming before
0:39:42 > 0:39:44the others at the right end.
0:39:44 > 0:39:49The one he saw as the best key was the one right in the middle,
0:39:49 > 0:39:51these little wavy-handled jars
0:39:51 > 0:39:57which come in from outside Egypt and gradually become more slimline
0:39:57 > 0:40:03until their little wavy handles turn into a band of decoration.
0:40:03 > 0:40:07These ones, we have writing, they must be at the end of the sequence.
0:40:07 > 0:40:11These are the original slips that he used
0:40:11 > 0:40:14to produce that beautiful visual chart.
0:40:14 > 0:40:17These are Petrie's very own, hand-written slips?
0:40:17 > 0:40:21The little bits of cardboard that he was using.
0:40:21 > 0:40:25They look as if he's just cut up cardboard boxes, like shoe boxes.
0:40:27 > 0:40:30'Petrie made a slip of cardboard for each grave,
0:40:30 > 0:40:34'with details of each piece of pottery found in it.
0:40:34 > 0:40:36'With this makeshift database,
0:40:36 > 0:40:40'he put the different types of pottery into chronological order.'
0:40:40 > 0:40:44Petrie was appreciated for having that special mathematical,
0:40:44 > 0:40:48computational quality that very few of his contemporaries
0:40:48 > 0:40:51or people after him have had.
0:40:51 > 0:40:53We take that for granted.
0:40:53 > 0:40:56We have the computer, but they needed Petrie.
0:40:59 > 0:41:03'Today, archaeologists the world over use Petrie's method.
0:41:03 > 0:41:07'It's called seriation, using pottery to date other objects.
0:41:10 > 0:41:14'Petrie scarcely realised how important his discoveries were.
0:41:14 > 0:41:17'He was too busy excavating at Abydos,
0:41:17 > 0:41:21'a royal burial site for the earliest Pharaohs.
0:41:25 > 0:41:31'Following in his footsteps is Josef Wegner of the University of Pennsylvania.'
0:41:33 > 0:41:35What are we looking at here?
0:41:36 > 0:41:41This is the first example of a hidden royal tomb in Egypt.
0:41:41 > 0:41:43In terms of what this looks like,
0:41:43 > 0:41:47it looks like a good old-fashioned, old-school excavation.
0:41:47 > 0:41:50- We've got lots of debris coming out, lots of workmen here.- Sure.
0:41:50 > 0:41:55- Does this look like a Petrie dig? - It strongly resembles a Petrie dig.
0:41:55 > 0:41:59The only way to get this material out is by hand.
0:41:59 > 0:42:03There's no machinery that can remove this amount of sand,
0:42:03 > 0:42:05so we have a large workforce.
0:42:05 > 0:42:09We use buckets and they hand it up from one to the next,
0:42:09 > 0:42:11all the way to the surface,
0:42:13 > 0:42:19Here we enter the passageway that takes you down to the tomb entrance.
0:42:19 > 0:42:21So this is where it all begins.
0:42:21 > 0:42:25The men are bringing the debris up, bucket by bucket,
0:42:25 > 0:42:28from the interior of the tomb,
0:42:28 > 0:42:32about 30 or 40 metres to the surface.
0:42:32 > 0:42:35- Can we get in?- Sure.
0:42:38 > 0:42:42'In Petrie's 1904 Archaeology Handbook he says,
0:42:42 > 0:42:46'"The man who cannot enjoy his work without regard to appearances,
0:42:46 > 0:42:51'"who will not go into the water or slither on slimy mud through unknown passages,
0:42:51 > 0:42:54'"had better not profess to excavate."'
0:43:06 > 0:43:11So we're under the vertical shaft. You enter the first chamber.
0:43:11 > 0:43:16- All lined in fine dressed masonry. - Oh, my goodness!- A little staircase.
0:43:16 > 0:43:20This wonderful carved ceiling simulates the style of logs.
0:43:20 > 0:43:23They went to all the trouble to do this.
0:43:23 > 0:43:26When Flinders Petrie saw this in 1903,
0:43:26 > 0:43:28he was moved by this architecture.
0:43:28 > 0:43:33It was one of the most beautiful architectural spaces he'd ever seen.
0:43:33 > 0:43:37And at that time, the debris was almost up to the ceiling.
0:43:37 > 0:43:39That's the job you've had to do.
0:43:39 > 0:43:44The debris was just a metre below the ceiling at that point.
0:43:44 > 0:43:48We've excavated all the way down to floor level in this chamber.
0:43:48 > 0:43:53This is just the first part. It goes on and on 180 metres,
0:43:53 > 0:43:56so we have a good number of years of excavation.
0:43:56 > 0:43:59- That's all still full of debris? - Yeah.
0:43:59 > 0:44:05Piece by piece, we'll bring that debris out and excavate it and see what clues we find.
0:44:05 > 0:44:09From here, we climb up into the unexcavated part of the tomb.
0:44:09 > 0:44:12Wow!
0:44:12 > 0:44:14You're pretty nimble at this!
0:44:14 > 0:44:16Be careful here.
0:44:16 > 0:44:20- There's a little loose debris which is easy to slip on.- OK.
0:44:21 > 0:44:27It's part of the essential archaeological skill set, to be able to shin up these...
0:44:27 > 0:44:31- The temperature and humidity rise significantly.- Oh, wow. Yeah.
0:44:31 > 0:44:34Oh, my goodness me! Look at this!
0:44:36 > 0:44:39This passageway goes 50 metres on into the tomb.
0:44:39 > 0:44:46- It's unexcavated, so it looks exactly as it did in the days that Petrie saw this tomb.- Incredible.
0:44:48 > 0:44:51'Hilda loved the work but she didn't want a family.
0:44:51 > 0:44:54'In fact, she had a terror of pregnancy.
0:44:54 > 0:44:58'But after ten years of marriage, Petrie won her round.
0:44:59 > 0:45:03'In 1907, Hilda gave birth to a son, John,
0:45:03 > 0:45:07'and a daughter, Ann, followed two years later.
0:45:07 > 0:45:11'Petrie continued to spend winters in Egypt and, as the children grew,
0:45:11 > 0:45:14'Hilda sometimes joined him.
0:45:14 > 0:45:19'This period of Petrie's life consisted of multiple excavations
0:45:19 > 0:45:21'at a frenetic pace.
0:45:21 > 0:45:24'By modern standards, it was too much, too fast.
0:45:24 > 0:45:29'Today's archaeologists wince at the photographs of waterlogged Memphis
0:45:29 > 0:45:33'with workers who couldn't see what they were digging up.
0:45:33 > 0:45:37'The First World War put a stop to excavation.
0:45:37 > 0:45:41'Petrie was forced to stay at home while Egypt was a theatre of war
0:45:41 > 0:45:44'between the British and the Ottoman Empires.
0:45:47 > 0:45:50'He volunteered for war service.
0:45:50 > 0:45:54'Unsurprisingly, at 61, he was turned down.
0:45:56 > 0:46:00'He bought a substantial family house in Hampstead
0:46:00 > 0:46:05'and threw himself into British intellectual life.
0:46:05 > 0:46:09'Fatherhood prompted Petrie to write two books about eugenics.
0:46:09 > 0:46:13'He wrote that the fittest members of society should be encouraged to breed
0:46:13 > 0:46:17'and the unfit lower classes to seek voluntary sterilisation.
0:46:17 > 0:46:21'In the early 20th century, these now shocking views were fashionable
0:46:21 > 0:46:26'with the likes of Winston Churchill, Marie Stopes and George Bernard Shaw.'
0:46:29 > 0:46:33Flinders was churning out a huge range of books.
0:46:33 > 0:46:37He wrote about ancient Egyptian tools, weapons, art, architecture,
0:46:37 > 0:46:39papyri, you name it.
0:46:39 > 0:46:41He also wrote about modern Britain.
0:46:41 > 0:46:44This is when he wrote his book on eugenics.
0:46:44 > 0:46:48He seems to have been angry with anyone who wasn't like him -
0:46:48 > 0:46:54people who read down-market newspapers, people who craved unwholesome excitement
0:46:54 > 0:46:57and people who wasted time watching sport.
0:46:59 > 0:47:03'For the first time, the Petries could enjoy a stable family life.
0:47:03 > 0:47:06'Even on holiday, they did something productive,
0:47:06 > 0:47:11'like measuring figures in the landscape.'
0:47:11 > 0:47:17What was life like for the Petries as a family back in the UK during the First World War?
0:47:17 > 0:47:21Well, it must have been really nice for them.
0:47:21 > 0:47:24It's the only time in the children's childhood
0:47:24 > 0:47:27that they had their parents there all the time.
0:47:27 > 0:47:31What exactly were they trying to teach them? Why were they here?
0:47:31 > 0:47:34I'm not sure they were trying to teach them.
0:47:34 > 0:47:38They were concerned with surveying the hill figures of England.
0:47:38 > 0:47:44The Long Man here, the Cerne Giant and the Uffington White Horse, and one or two others.
0:47:44 > 0:47:47It was something that the children could enjoy
0:47:47 > 0:47:51without it being difficult or dangerous, I suppose.
0:47:51 > 0:47:57Certainly, Ann, the little one, who was only nine when they were here,
0:47:57 > 0:48:02said that it was terribly boring holding the end of the tape measure all day.
0:48:02 > 0:48:04Right!
0:48:04 > 0:48:09'Lisette has inherited her grandfather's mathematical gifts
0:48:09 > 0:48:14'and teaches astronomy at the Open University.'
0:48:15 > 0:48:19In 1919, within a year of the war's end,
0:48:19 > 0:48:21the Petries were back in Egypt.
0:48:21 > 0:48:23He was now 66 and Hilda was 48.
0:48:23 > 0:48:29They had no desire to stay in England all year to look after the children.
0:48:29 > 0:48:32'John and Ann were sent to boarding school,
0:48:32 > 0:48:38'while their parents resumed their winters in Egypt and summers in Britain.
0:48:38 > 0:48:43'In Egypt, the nationalists who had resisted British rule for 40 years
0:48:43 > 0:48:45'finally won a degree of independence.
0:48:45 > 0:48:49'In 1922, Britain granted free elections to an Egyptian parliament.'
0:48:53 > 0:48:59Petrie was in Egypt in 1922, but it wasn't the new political freedom that worried him.
0:48:59 > 0:49:02It was the most famous archaeological discovery of all time.
0:49:07 > 0:49:11'That November, as if fate had decreed it, Petrie's former student,
0:49:11 > 0:49:15'Howard Carter, discovered Tutankhamun's tomb.
0:49:15 > 0:49:17'The Egyptians changed the rules
0:49:17 > 0:49:22'by tightly controlling distribution of their treasures.
0:49:22 > 0:49:27'Petrie could no longer fund his work by exporting what he found.'
0:49:31 > 0:49:37Ultimately, when the Department of Antiquities in Egypt
0:49:37 > 0:49:43acquired the capability to enforce their rules,
0:49:43 > 0:49:48he left Egypt and went to Palestine to dig
0:49:48 > 0:49:51because he couldn't get his own way any more.
0:49:51 > 0:49:55It was not the case that he lost interest in Egypt.
0:49:55 > 0:50:01It was more that he wanted to keep on doing
0:50:01 > 0:50:05what he had...what he did best.
0:50:06 > 0:50:09'In 1926, Petrie moved his focus to Palestine,
0:50:09 > 0:50:13'under British rule, following the First World War.
0:50:13 > 0:50:16'30 years after his seminal work at Tell el-Hesy,
0:50:16 > 0:50:21'he excavated a series of frontier cities.
0:50:21 > 0:50:24'Petrie was now a Fellow of the Royal Society
0:50:24 > 0:50:28'and a Knight of the Realm for services to archaeology.
0:50:28 > 0:50:31'But even at 73, he didn't want to retire.
0:50:36 > 0:50:39'His work in the 1920s and '30s was very productive.
0:50:39 > 0:50:43'He brought a huge collection home to University College London
0:50:43 > 0:50:47'and founded a new institute housing over 20,000 of his finds.'
0:50:47 > 0:50:52Every season, they got masses of finds, really good quality material.
0:50:52 > 0:50:57Complete pots, but also lots of small objects like amulets, beads,
0:50:57 > 0:51:02weaponry, tools - the sort of everyday thing he was interested in.
0:51:02 > 0:51:07Some of this material he had encountered in the Egyptian delta.
0:51:07 > 0:51:10Petrie was quite an old man, working with younger people.
0:51:10 > 0:51:13Did this cause any friction?
0:51:13 > 0:51:16When they first started working in Palestine,
0:51:16 > 0:51:18everybody got on very well.
0:51:18 > 0:51:22In the early 1930s, there were some tensions that developed.
0:51:22 > 0:51:26Petrie and his wife were happy sitting at the dig house,
0:51:26 > 0:51:30talking about history and archaeology, cracking a few jokes.
0:51:30 > 0:51:33His staff wanted to go off and have fun.
0:51:33 > 0:51:39They built a new annexe to the dig house, and the young people went off there after dark.
0:51:39 > 0:51:43There was a bit of smoking going on, a bit of drinking going on.
0:51:43 > 0:51:46Beer was mentioned, and they had a gramophone -
0:51:46 > 0:51:49something Petrie didn't approve of at all!
0:51:49 > 0:51:54He thought the gramophone was part of the nastiness that comes with modern life.
0:51:54 > 0:51:59Cars that are too fast and this dreadful machine that created noise.
0:51:59 > 0:52:02He liked the tranquillity of a dig
0:52:02 > 0:52:04and it was taken away from him.
0:52:04 > 0:52:08'Petrie's idea of a fun evening in was to read a good book.'
0:52:08 > 0:52:13Petrie often read long into the night in the dark of the dig house.
0:52:13 > 0:52:17He would balance a candlestick on his head...
0:52:17 > 0:52:19which works.
0:52:19 > 0:52:22You just have to keep very still.
0:52:26 > 0:52:31'This is the only moving footage of Flinders Petrie, shot in 1934,
0:52:31 > 0:52:34'with Hilda, their daughter Ann and the painter de Laszlo.
0:52:34 > 0:52:38'This was their last summer in Britain before they moved,
0:52:38 > 0:52:40'permanently, to Jerusalem.
0:52:47 > 0:52:51'They found a warm welcome at the American School of Oriental Research
0:52:51 > 0:52:53'now the Albright Institute.'
0:52:53 > 0:52:55Hi. Nice to meet you.
0:52:55 > 0:53:01'The Petries spent their last eight years together here.'
0:53:04 > 0:53:10When he was living here, a lot of people came to visit Petrie.
0:53:10 > 0:53:14He was such an important and well-known figure
0:53:14 > 0:53:17in his latter years.
0:53:17 > 0:53:21Everyone who passed through Jerusalem would knock on his door.
0:53:21 > 0:53:23- Have a cup of tea.- Exactly.
0:53:23 > 0:53:27'They bought an old bus and converted it into a caravan,
0:53:27 > 0:53:32'complete with bench beds, cooking equipment, water canisters and a hurricane lamp.
0:53:32 > 0:53:37'In this, they set off to find archaeological proof of the Bible.'
0:53:37 > 0:53:41He really refused to recognise old age.
0:53:41 > 0:53:45He was just going to carry on. And he did.
0:53:47 > 0:53:50'Petrie finally stopped working at the age of 86,
0:53:50 > 0:53:54'when Britain went to war against Germany.
0:53:54 > 0:53:58'Eugenics was now a dirty word linked to the Nazis' grotesque ideas
0:53:58 > 0:54:00'about racial purity.'
0:54:02 > 0:54:06With hindsight, we look back on the eugenics movement.
0:54:06 > 0:54:08It horrifies us. It horrifies me.
0:54:08 > 0:54:13But I don't know if Petrie knew where things were leading.
0:54:13 > 0:54:16I don't think he had that in his mind.
0:54:17 > 0:54:19I wouldn't say he was a racist.
0:54:19 > 0:54:25I would say that he had his ideas about the differences between people
0:54:25 > 0:54:31and those ideas conformed to ideas which were prevalent at his time.
0:54:32 > 0:54:35'Petrie certainly didn't sanction
0:54:35 > 0:54:39'the use of his discoveries in anti-Semitic propaganda.
0:54:39 > 0:54:43'The Hawara mummy portraits were used in a twisted argument
0:54:43 > 0:54:48'about the influence of jews through the ages.
0:54:50 > 0:54:56'And Petrie didn't know that his adopted country of Palestine would become the new state of Israel.
0:54:56 > 0:55:01'When his health failed in 1940, he was cared for in the British Government Hospital,
0:55:01 > 0:55:03'now a Jerusalem council building.
0:55:03 > 0:55:06'Hilda visited every day.
0:55:08 > 0:55:11'One friend reported that on his death bed,
0:55:11 > 0:55:14'Petrie's mind was running even faster than usual.
0:55:14 > 0:55:19'He talked without pause on subjects from copper implements in Mesopotamia
0:55:19 > 0:55:22'to malaria mosquitoes in Gaza.
0:55:27 > 0:55:34'He died on 29 July 1942 and was buried the next day in the Protestant cemetery on Mount Zion.'
0:55:39 > 0:55:43His grave is simply marked with a roughly cut headstone
0:55:43 > 0:55:46engraved with his name and the Egyptian symbol for life.
0:55:46 > 0:55:51It's touching to see that somebody's left a scattering of potsherds.
0:55:51 > 0:55:55Before he died, he made an extraordinary request.
0:55:55 > 0:55:59He wanted to donate his brain to medical science.
0:55:59 > 0:56:01Now...
0:56:01 > 0:56:04I didn't believe this story.
0:56:04 > 0:56:07I thought it was too fantastic to be true.
0:56:07 > 0:56:12So I asked someone who would know, and it turned out she had been there
0:56:12 > 0:56:16in Jerusalem on the day that Petrie died.
0:56:16 > 0:56:20She had been going through the hospital and there, in the corridor,
0:56:20 > 0:56:23was a hospital trolley
0:56:23 > 0:56:29with a glass bell jar sitting on it and Petrie's head underneath it!
0:56:29 > 0:56:32And so the story was true.
0:56:32 > 0:56:37The head was kept in Jerusalem for the duration of the war,
0:56:37 > 0:56:41in the American School of Oriental Research.
0:56:41 > 0:56:47At the end of the war, Lady Petrie is reputed to have flown home,
0:56:47 > 0:56:51from Palestine to London,
0:56:51 > 0:56:56with her husband's head in a hat box on her lap.
0:56:56 > 0:56:59'Petrie's head is stored, but not displayed,
0:56:59 > 0:57:02'at the Royal College of Surgeons.
0:57:02 > 0:57:06'His brain has not yet been studied for the secrets of its genius.
0:57:10 > 0:57:16'Petrie's true legacy is in the way we now understand ancient civilisations.
0:57:16 > 0:57:20'We should all remember the maverick genius who gave us the tools
0:57:20 > 0:57:23'to unlock the secrets of the past.'
0:57:23 > 0:57:26I think he made archaeology popular.
0:57:26 > 0:57:30He brought the attention of the world to the work he was doing
0:57:30 > 0:57:32in a way that made it exciting
0:57:32 > 0:57:34and very humane.
0:57:34 > 0:57:39We did learn a lot about archaeology from Petrie.
0:57:39 > 0:57:45He established archaeology as a science and we did learn from him.
0:57:45 > 0:57:47There's something special about Petrie.
0:57:47 > 0:57:53Not only because of his achievements but also because of all the stories which surrounded him.
0:57:53 > 0:57:57For that reason, I think he'll always be remembered.
0:57:57 > 0:58:02He'll have his part in the history of archaeology for ever.
0:58:05 > 0:58:11To walk in the footsteps of Flinders Petrie is to witness the invention of archaeology.
0:58:11 > 0:58:16For 70 years, he gave his life to understanding the ancient peoples of Egypt and Palestine.
0:58:16 > 0:58:19He left us the richer for it.
0:58:19 > 0:58:22He was stubborn, obsessive and eccentric.
0:58:22 > 0:58:26Perhaps those were the very qualities he needed to be a pioneer.
0:58:51 > 0:58:54Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd