

\^UL 



APPLETONS' 



POPULAR SCIENCE 



MONTHLY. 



APRIL, 1900. ■ 



RECENT YEARS OF EGYPTIAN EXPLORATION. 



By W. M. flinders PETRIE, 

 pkofessor of egyptology, university college, london. 



Ij^AMILIAR as we are with tlie methods of science — exact ob- - 

 servation and record, comparison, and the strict weeding out 

 of hypotheses — yet such methods have only gradually been applied 

 to various branches of learning. 



Geometry became a science long ago, zoology much later, medi- 

 cine only a generation or two ago, and the history of man is but 

 just being developed into a science. What was done for other 

 sciences by the pioneers of the past is now being done in the present 

 day for archseology. "We now have to devise methods, to form a 

 notation for recording facts, and to begin to lay out our groundwork 

 of knowledge. With very few exceptions, it may be said of Egypt 

 that there is no publication of monimients before this century that 

 is of the least use, no record or dating of objects before 1860, and 

 no comparison or study of the history of classes of products before 

 1890. Thus, the work of recent years in Egyptology is really the 

 history of the formation of a science. 



The great stride that has been made in the last six years is the 

 opening up of prehistoric Egypt, leading us back some two thou- 

 sand years before the time of the pyramid builders. Till recently, 

 nothing was known before the age of the finest art and the greatest 

 buildings, and it was a familiar puzzle how such a grand civilization 

 could have left no traces of its rise. This was only a case of blind- 

 ness on the part of explorers. Upper Egypt teems with prehis- 

 toric remains, but, as most of what appears is dug up by plunderers 

 for the market, until there, is a demand for a class of objects, very 



VOL. LVI .51 



