The History of Collecting at the Petrie Museum

Nestled in between the Science Library and Medical Science buildings lies the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology. This is a gem of a museum, an unexpected wealth of exhibits in the heart of UCL.

Last week it played host to Subhadra Das for her talk, ‘The Problem with Museums: A Case Study of the History of Collecting at the Petrie Museum’.

As the UCL Cultural Property Advisor and an ex-employee of the museum, Subhadra is well versed in the lore of the Petrie. Taking the Petrie as a case study, with specific reference to its namesake, the renowned Egyptologist Flinders Petrie, Das walked us through how this fascinating collection came to be, and how such collections might not be as glossy as they appear.

Central to the evening’s talk was the theme of illicit versus legitimate acquisition of artefacts, and the knowledge that can be gleaned from them. Contemporary archaeology is a very careful business; the physical matter of archaeology is a limited and finite resource, and must therefore be dealt with carefully and sensitively. This, however, was not always the case, perhaps even right here in Euston.

The initial collection was donated by the writer Amelia Edwards, who fell in love with the country after touring it in the late 1870s. Along with this material donation, she also established the professorship at UCL specifically for Petrie, after he had made a name for himself undertaking various previous excavations.

Petrie travelled Egypt for years, working on a variety of sites. He was a meticulous surveyor and collector who strived for breadth of coverage in his findings, wanting to fill the ‘gaps’ in the library of his findings.

To Petrie, it was the information and knowledge that could be gained from the finds that was important, rather than the discovery. Traders, who sought to unearth and sell artefacts, cared not for knowledge, but profit, and so in their pursuits robbed their findings of provenance.

Petrie called such dealers “morally indefensible”, and was known for chasing them off his sites, and was even known to resort to violence. However, Petrie was no paragon of archaeological ethics himself, at least by modern standards.

His precise, detailed notes record many occasions of buying items from ‘pet’ dealers, who he had trained to extract items (and importantly, their information) according to his strict specifications. Perhaps more damning are the records of Petrie selling artefacts himself, becoming a de facto dealer.

However, these acts were themselves justifiable to Petrie by merit of his goals. He thought that it was not the object itself that was important, but what he could learn from it. If he could learn just as much from purchased material, knowing that the context and knowledge were being retained, then he was happy. Similarly, it seems that he only sold pieces of lesser educational value, and even then only to fund further trips, which he believed were the best way to yield the best data.

It is also worth noting that both his actions, and those of the dealers and traders were at the time all completely legal, and sanctioned by the Egyptian government. While Petrie’s tactics might not be acceptable by modern standards, for those of the time he was arguably among the more progressive minds in the field.

I am not an archaeologist, but learning about the characters and ethics involved in the acquisition of the thousand-year old relics you’re sat amongst is particularly thought-provoking. To paraphrase Petrie himself, these artefacts probably won’t last longer in a museum than they already had up until their discovery, which is all the more reason to learn from them now.