File Petrie MSS 1.11 - Petrie Journal 1891 to 1892 (Amarna)

138 pages

• Journal letters.
• October 22, 1891, through to April 23, 1892.
• Brief entries for dates between April 24 and October 1, 1892.
• Handwritten.
• Petrie is at Amarna for the whole season mainly excavating in the Great Palace where he uncovered a painted pavement decorated with scenes of animals, birds and vegetation. Subsequently, much of the season was devoted to recording the pavement, as well as sealing it with a tapioca-based solution in order to protect the surface. Petrie was assisted by Howard Carter who was in Egypt for the first time. Petrie's opinion of the 17-year-old fledgling archaeologist is recorded in this journal: "Mr. Carter is a good-natured lad, whose interest is entirely in painting & natural history; he only takes this digging as being on the spot & convenient to Mr Amherst [Carter's sponser], & it is of no use for me to work him up as an excavator."
• Sites: Amarna (el-Amarna).
• Includes several small watercolours of objects.

• Object distribution notes, in Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, University College London.
• http://egyptartefacts.griffith.ox.ac.uk/excavations/1891-92-el-amarna (accessed 21/03/2018).

• Petrie, W. M. Flinders, Tell el Amarna (1894) (OEB 147222) http://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/petrie1894 (accessed 22/03/2018).

• Petrie, W. M. Flinders, Seventy years in archaeology [1931], 134-43 (OEB 147191).

• Drower, Margaret S., Flinders Petrie: a life in archaeology (1985), 187-98 (OEB 29381).

• Drower, Margaret S. (ed.), Letters from the desert: the correspondence of Flinders and Hilda Petrie (2004), 80-7 (OEB 154602).

• Transcription: Nicholson, Paul T., "Keeper of the house of the desert", in: Ikram, Salima and Aidan Dodson (eds), Beyond the horizon: studies in Egyptian art, archaeology and history in honour of Barry J. Kemp (2009), vol. 1, 275-323 (OEB 162724).

• The transcription of the journal follows that published by Paul T. Nicholson; Elizabeth Fleming has proofread it, and Francisco Bosch-Puche has prepared it for publication on this website.