Facsimile reissue of important excavation and survey work at and around a cluster of ancient Egyptian towns on the bank of the Nile that examined both domestic structures and associated tombs.
Facsimile edition of the 1974 reissue of Flinders Petrie’s 1896 account of the excavation (mainly) of tombs in the area around Ballas and Naqada on the edge of the Egyptian desert, 30 miles north of Thebes.
Several areas of the ancient towns of Deir and Nubt – the latter identified as the center of Set worship – and more tombs were investigated. At each cemetery, traditionally furnished Old and Middle Kingdom tombs were examined and many proved to have been plundered and reused in antiquity. Petrie named these later burials as of a New Race and describes them in detail at Ballas and Naqada. A collection of mostly Palaeolithic flint artefacts is also described.
This series comprises facsimile re-issues of typological catalogues produced between 1898 and 1937 by W.M. Flinders Petrie, based on his vast collection of Egyptian artefacts which now reside in The Petrie Museum of Egyptian and Sudanese Archaeology, University College, London. Long out of print, the catalogues were re-issued in facsimile by publishers Aris & Phillips in the 1970s alongside newly-commissioned titles by contemporary experts. Petrie’s catalogues remain invaluable source material today. The Oxbow Classics in Egyptology series now makes a selection of these important resources available again in print for a new generation of students and scholars.
Introduction
1. The cemeteries of Ballas
2. Selected Egyptian tombs, Ballas
3. Products of the New Race, Ballas
4. Selected graves of the New Race, Ballas
5. Summary of Ballas
6. Cemetery of the New Race, Naqada. The drawn graves
7. Notable graves, Naqada
8. Details of burials, Naqada
9. Description of plates
10. Flint implements of Naqada (by F.C.J. Spurrell)
11. Conclusions
12. Nubt, the town of Set
Index
Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie (1853–1942) was a pioneer in the field of ‘modern’ archaeology. He introduced the stratigraphical approach in his Egyptian campaigns that underpins modern excavation techniques, explored scientific approaches to analysis and developed detailed typological studies of artefact classification and recording, which allowed for the stratigraphic dating of archaeological layers. He excavated and surveyed over 30 sites in Egypt, including Giza, Luxor, Amarna and Tell Nebesheh.
