Bonhams is selling The Treasure of Harageh, which includes these five banded travertine objects
Bonhams is selling The Treasure of Harageh, which includes these five banded travertine objects
Gay. Let people enjoy them. And amateur archeologists have contributed mightily to the body of knowledge. Why is archeology the sole domain on universities and government?
This is some of the work of the uncredentialed amateur who found all the items to begin with. All he did would be illegal or scorned on today.
“In his teenage years, Petrie surveyed British prehistoric monuments (commencing with the late Romano-British ‘British Camp’ that lay within yards of his family home in Charlton) in attempts to understand their geometry (at 19 producing the most accurate survey of Stonehenge). His father had corresponded with Piazzi Smyth about his theories of the Great Pyramid and Petrie travelled to Egypt in early 1880 to make an accurate survey of Giza, making him the first to properly investigate how they were constructed (many theories had been advanced on this, and Petrie read them all, but none were based on first hand observation or logic).
Petrie’s published report of this triangulation survey, and his analysis of the architecture of Giza therein, was exemplary in its methodology and accuracy, disproved Smyth’s theories and still provides much of the basic data regarding the pyramid plateau to this day. On that visit, he was appalled by the rate of destruction of monuments (some listed in guidebooks had been worn away completely since then) and mummies. He described Egypt as “a house on fire, so rapid was the destruction” and felt his duty to be that of a “salvage man, to get all I could, as quickly as possible and then, when I was 60, I would sit and write it all.”
Beautiful objects, by the way.
