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109-465: In 1884, Flinders Petrie arrived in Egypt to begin his excavations there. His first dig was at Tanis , where he arrived with 170 workmen. Later in the 1930s, the ruins at Tanis were explored by Pierre Montet . The masses of broken Ramesside stonework at Tanis led archaeologists to identify it as Pi-Ramesses. Yet it eventually came to be recognised that none of these monuments and inscriptions originated at

218-464: A great flood to wipe out the rest of the world. When the waters recede, God promises he will never destroy the world with water again, making a rainbow as a symbol of his promise . God sees humankind cooperating to build a great tower city, the Tower of Babel , and divides humanity with many languages and sets them apart with confusion. Then, a generation line from Shem to Abram is described. Abram,

327-454: A 300-square-foot (28 m ) New Kingdom painted pavement of garden and animals and hunting scenes. This became a tourist attraction but, as there was no direct access to the site, tourists wrecked neighbouring fields on their way to it. This made local farmers deface the paintings, and it is only thanks to Petrie's copies that their original appearance is known. In early 1896, Petrie and his archaeological team were conducting excavations on

436-461: A bowl of stew. His mother, Rebekah, ensures Jacob rightly gains his father's blessing as the firstborn son and inheritor. At 77 years of age, Jacob leaves his parents and later seeks a wife and meets Rachel at a well. He goes to her father, his uncle , where he works for a total of 14 years to earn his wives, Rachel and Leah . Jacob's name is changed to Israel after his wrestle with an angel , and by his wives and their handmaidens he has twelve sons,

545-403: A cliff face, recording embassies to Nubia , famines and wars. By the time he reached Aswan, a telegram had reached there to confirm the renewal of his funding. He then went straight to the burial site at Fayum , particularly interested in post-30 BC burials, which had not previously been fully studied. He found intact tombs and 60 of the famous portraits , and discovered from inscriptions on

654-413: A huge central temple, a large precinct of mansions bordering the river in the west set in a rigid grid pattern of streets, and a disorderly collection of houses and workshops in the east. The palace of Ramesses is believed to lie beneath the modern village of Qantir. An Austrian team of archaeologists headed by Manfred Bietak, who discovered the site, found evidence of many canals and lakes and have described

763-561: A long period of time. The involvement of multiple authors is suggested by internal contradictions within the text. For example, Genesis includes two creation narratives . By the early 1860s, the leading theory for the Pentateuch's composition was the old supplementary hypothesis. This theory held that the earliest portions, the so-called Book of Origins (containing Genesis 1 and most of the priestly laws in Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers),

872-500: A male heir, and the story is constantly complicated by the fact that each prospective mother— Sarah , Rebekah and Rachel —is barren. The ancestors, however, retain their faith in God and God in each case gives a son—in Jacob's case, twelve sons, the foundation of the chosen Israelites . Each succeeding generation of the three promises attains a more rich fulfilment, until through Joseph "all

981-479: A man descended from Noah, is instructed by God to travel from his home in Mesopotamia to the land of Canaan . There, God makes a promise to Abram, promising that his descendants shall be as numerous as the stars, but that people will suffer oppression in a foreign land for four hundred years, after which they will inherit the land "from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates ". Abram's name

1090-525: A number of variations and revisions of the documentary hypothesis have been proposed. The new supplementary hypothesis posits three main sources for the Pentateuch: J, D, and P. The E source is considered no more than a variation of J, and P is considered a body of revisions and expansions to the J (or "non-Priestly") material. The Deuteronomistic source does not appear in Genesis. More recent thinking

1199-578: A part in his decision to move his capital so far north; but geopolitical reasons may have been of greater importance, as Pi-Ramesses was much closer to the Egyptian vassal states in Asia and to the border with the hostile Hittite empire . Intelligence and diplomats would reach the pharaoh much more quickly, and the main corps of the army were also encamped in the city and could quickly be mobilised to deal with incursions of Hittites or Shasu nomads from across

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1308-560: A pillar of salt for going against his word. Lot's daughters, concerned that they are fugitives who will never find husbands, get Lot drunk so they can become pregnant by him, and give birth to the ancestors of the Moabites and Ammonites . Abraham and Sarah go to the Philistine town of Gerar , pretending to be brother and sister (they are half-siblings). The King of Gerar takes Sarah for his wife, but God warns him to return her (as she

1417-408: A revival under Shishaq , usually identified with the historical pharaoh Shoshenq I of the 22nd Dynasty (10th century BCE), who tried to emulate the achievements of Ramesses. The existence of the city as Egypt's capital as late as the 10th century BCE makes problematic the claim that the reference to Ramesses in the Exodus story is a memory of the era of Ramesses II; in fact, it has been claimed that

1526-576: A series of archaeological studies in the Sinai Peninsula centered around the site of Serabit el-Khadim , a lucrative turquoise mine used during the Twelfth and Thirteenth Dynasty and again between the Eighteenth and mid- Twentieth Dynasty . As they were thoroughly exploring and studying the temple of Hathor and the surrounding mining area, they discovered amongst, the Egyptian texts,

1635-510: A significant series of foreign inscriptions. Having been joined by his wife Hilda, herself also an egyptologist, Petrie realized the script was wholly alphabetic and not the combination of logograms and syllabics characteristic of Egyptian script proper. He thus assumed that the script showed a script that the turquoise miners had devised themselves, using linear signs that they had borrowed from hieroglyphics. He published his findings in London

1744-509: A single law code accepted by the entire community. The two powerful groups making up the community—the priestly families who controlled the Second Temple and who traced their origin to Moses and the wilderness wanderings, and the major landowning families who made up the "elders" and who traced their own origins to Abraham, who had "given" them the land—were in conflict over many issues, and each had its own "history of origins". However,

1853-608: A special relationship with one people alone (Abraham and his descendants through Isaac and Jacob). In Judaism , the theological importance of Genesis centres on the covenants linking God to his chosen people and the people to the Promised Land . The name Genesis is from the Latin Vulgate , in turn borrowed or transliterated from Greek Γένεσις , meaning 'origin'; Biblical Hebrew : בְּרֵאשִׁית , romanized:  Bərēʾšīṯ , 'In [the] beginning'. Genesis

1962-532: A team excavating over 17 cemeteries containing numerous graves between Hu and Abadiya, Egypt. The dig team included Beatrice Orme , David Randall-MacIver , Arthur Cruttenden Mace , Henrietta Lawes and Hilda Petrie. Predynastic, Old Kingdom, Middle Kingdom and Roman graves were excavated and published at 'Diospolis Parva'. In the winter of 1904-5, Petrie and his team (among which we find Currelly , Capitain Weill , Lieutenant Frost, Miss Eckenstein ) were conducting

2071-515: A temple in Petrie's area of concession at Luxor . This temple complex was located just north of the original funerary temple of Amenhotep III, which had been built on a flood plain. They were initially surprised that this building which they were excavating During the field season of 1895/6, at the Ramesseum, Petrie and the young German Egyptologist Wilhelm Spiegelberg became friends. Spiegelberg

2180-537: Is circumcision ; and the last, which does not appear until the Book of Exodus, is with Israel alone, and its sign is Sabbath . A great leader mediates each covenant ( Noah , Abraham, Moses), and at each stage God progressively reveals himself by his name ( Elohim with Noah, El Shaddai with Abraham, Yahweh with Moses). Throughout Genesis, various figures engage in deception or trickery to survive or prosper. Biblical scholar David M. Carr notes that such stories reflect

2289-561: Is about to lay the knife upon his son, "the Angel of the Lord" restrains him, promising him again innumerable descendants. On the death of Sarah, Abraham purchases Machpelah (believed to be modern Hebron ) for a family tomb and sends his servant to Mesopotamia to find among his relations a wife for Isaac; after proving herself worthy, Rebekah becomes Isaac's betrothed. Keturah , Abraham's other wife, births more children, among whose descendants are

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2398-483: Is at the moment concerned.     I think this is one of the most striking cases of accurate visualising power it is possible to imagine. Francis Galton , (1883). 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 he produced

2507-414: Is born in the mind. I was already in archaeology by nature." The chair of Edwards Professor of Egyptian Archaeology and Philology at University College London was set up and funded in 1892 following a bequest from Amelia Edwards , who died suddenly in that year. Petrie's supporter since 1880, Edwards had instructed that he should be its first incumbent. He continued to excavate in Egypt after taking up

2616-492: Is changed to "Israel", and through the agency of his son Joseph , the children of Israel descend into Egypt, 70 people in all with their households, and God promises them a future of greatness. Genesis ends with Israel in Egypt, ready for the coming of Moses and the Exodus (departure). The narrative is punctuated by a series of covenants with God, successively narrowing in scope from all humankind (the covenant with Noah ) to

2725-399: Is changed to 'Abraham' and that of his wife Sarai to Sarah (meaning 'princess'), and God says that all males should be circumcised as a sign of his promise to Abraham. Due to her old age, Sarah tells Abraham to take her Egyptian handmaiden, Hagar , as a second wife (to bear a child). Through Hagar, Abraham fathers Ishmael . God then plans to destroy the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah for

2834-570: Is eliminated. This antiquity was needed to prove the worth of Israel's traditions to the nations (the neighbours of the Jews in the early Persian province of Judea), and to reconcile and unite the various factions within Israel itself. Describing the work of the biblical authors, John Van Seters wrote that lacking many historical traditions and none from the distant past, "They had to use myths and legends for earlier periods. In order to make sense out of

2943-611: Is his 1905 discovery and correct identification of the character of the Proto-Sinaitic script , the ancestor of almost all alphabetic scripts. Petrie developed the system of dating layers based on pottery and ceramic findings. Petrie has been denounced for his pro- eugenics views; he was a dedicated believer in the superiority of the Northern peoples over the Latinate and Southern peoples . He has been referred to as

3052-416: Is interpreted by Christians as the " fall of man " into sin . Eve bears two sons, Cain and Abel . Cain works in the garden, and Abel works with meat; they both offer offerings to God one day, and God does not accept Cain's offering but does accept Abel's. This causes Cain to resent Abel, and Cain ends up murdering him. God then curses Cain . Eve bears another son, Seth , to take Abel's place in accordance to

3161-677: Is located 8 miles southeast of Tanis and, among the remains of an ancient temple there, Petrie found a royal sphinx, now located at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston . By the end of the Tanis dig, he ran out of funding but, reluctant to leave the country in case it was renewed, he spent 1887 cruising the Nile taking photographs as a less subjective record than sketches. During this time, he also climbed rope ladders at Sehel Island near Aswan to draw and photograph thousands of early Egyptian inscriptions on

3270-476: Is normally excluded). Since the name YHWH had not been revealed to them, they worshipped El in his various manifestations. (It is, however, worth noting that in the Jahwist source, the patriarchs refer to deity by the name YHWH, for example in Genesis 15.) Through the patriarchs, God announces the election of Israel, that is, he chooses Israel to be his special people and commits himself to their future. God tells

3379-441: Is really Abraham's wife) and he obeys. God sends Sarah a son and tells her she should name him Isaac ; through him will be the establishment of the covenant (promise). Sarah then drives Ishmael and his mother Hagar out into the wilderness (because Ishmael is not her real son and Hagar is a slave), but God saves them and promises to make Ishmael a great nation. Then, God tests Abraham by demanding that he sacrifice Isaac . As Abraham

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3488-477: Is situated about 2 km (1.2 mi) south of Qantir. In 2017, archaeologists from the Roemer and Pelizaeus Museum unearthed footprints of children at the bottom of a mortar part, as well as pieces of painted wall, possibly fresco pending further study, believed to have served as decoration at the site of a palace or temple. Ramesses II was born and raised in the area, and family connections may have played

3597-587: Is still used today. In 1933, on retiring from his professorship, he moved permanently to Jerusalem , where he lived with Lady Petrie at the British School of Archaeology, then temporarily headquartered at the American School of Oriental Research (today the W. F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research ). Sir Flinders Petrie died in Jerusalem on 28 July 1942. His body was interred in

3706-653: Is that J dates from either just before or during the Babylonian Exile, and the Priestly final edition was made late in the Exilic period or soon after. The almost complete absence of all the characters and incidents mentioned in primeval history from the rest of the Hebrew Bible has led a sizeable minority of scholars to conclude that these chapters were composed much later than those that follow, possibly in

3815-562: Is the product of racial biology, he contended that the culture of Ancient Egypt was derived from an invading Caucasoid " Dynastic Race ", which had entered Egypt from the south in late predynastic times, conquered the "inferior, exhausted mulatto " natives, and slowly introduced the higher Dynastic civilisation as it interbred with them. With relation to some of his earlier conclusions in 1895, where Petrie had written: "the Egyptians were largely formed from Libyan immigrants to begin with;

3924-695: The Babylonian Exile ( c.  598 BC  – c.   538 BC ). At the end of the 19th century, most scholars adopted the documentary hypothesis . This theory held that the five books of the Pentateuch came from four sources: the Yahwist (abbreviated as J), the Elohist (E), the Deuteronomist (D) and the Priestly source (P). Each source was held to tell the same basic story, with

4033-550: The Garden of Eden . In the second chapter, God commanded the man that he is free to eat from any tree, including the tree of life, except from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil . Later, in chapter 3, a serpent , portrayed as a deceptive creature or trickster , convinces Eve to eat the fruit. She then convinces Adam to eat it, whereupon God throws them out and punishes them—Adam was punished with getting what he needs only by sweat and work, and Eve to giving birth in pain. This

4142-708: The Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament . Its Hebrew name is the same as its first word , Bereshit ( 'In the beginning' ). Genesis purports to be an account of the creation of the world , the early history of humanity, and the origins of the Jewish people . Genesis is part of the Torah or Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible. Tradition credits Moses as the Torah's author . It

4251-630: The Jordan . Pi-Ramesses was built on the banks of the Pelusiac branch of the Nile. With a population of over 300,000, it was one of the largest cities of ancient Egypt. Pi-Ramesses flourished for more than a century after Ramesses' death, and poems were written about its splendour. According to the latest estimates, the city was spread over about 18 km (6.9 sq mi) or around 6 km (3.7 mi) long by 3 km (1.9 mi) wide. Its layout, as shown by ground-penetrating radar , consisted of

4360-756: The Land of Goshen to reside in, but also that Joseph settled his father and brothers in the best part of the land, in the land of Rameses. The Book of Exodus mentions "Raamses" or "Rames[s]es" (both spellings appear in the Masoretic Text ; Hebrew : רעמסס , romanized :  Ra‘m[ə]sês ) as one of the cities on whose construction the Israelites were forced to labour ( Exodus 1:11 ) and from where they departed on their Exodus journey ( Exodus 12:37 and Numbers 33:3 ). Understandably, this Ramesses has been identified by modern biblical archaeologists with

4469-602: The Midianites . Abraham dies at a prosperous old age and his family lays him to rest in Hebron (Machpelah). Isaac's wife Rebekah gives birth to the twins Esau (meaning 'velvet'), father of the Edomites , and Jacob (meaning 'supplanter' or 'follower'). Esau was a couple of seconds older as he had come out of the womb first, and was going to become the heir; however, through carelessness, he sold his birthright to Jacob for

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4578-533: The Protestant Cemetery on Mount Zion , but he donated his head (and thus his brain) to the Royal College of Surgeons of London . World War II was then at its height, and the head was delayed in transit. After being stored in a jar in the college basement, its label fell off and no one knew to whom the head belonged. However, it was eventually identified, and is now stored, but not displayed, at

4687-584: The Twentieth Dynasty of Egypt made the city less significant, leading to its abandonment as a royal residence. It is now known that the Pelusiac branch of the Nile began silting up c. 1060 BCE, leaving the city without water when the river eventually established a new course to the west now called the Tanitic branch. The Twenty-first Dynasty of Egypt moved the city to the new branch, establishing Djanet (Tanis) on its banks, 100 km (62 mi) to

4796-593: The Victorian crisis of faith as evidence mounted that the Earth was far older than six thousand years. It is a custom among religious Jewish communities for a weekly Torah portion , popularly referred to as a parashah , to be read during Jewish prayer services on Saturdays, Mondays and Thursdays. The full name, פָּרָשַׁת הַשָּׁבוּעַ , Parashat ha-Shavua , is popularly abbreviated to parashah (also parshah / p ɑː r ʃ ə / or parsha ), and

4905-420: The land of Goshen . Jacob calls his sons to his bedside and reveals their future before he dies. Joseph lives to old age and tells his brothers before his death that if God leads them out of the country, then they should take his bones with them. In 1978, David Clines published The Theme of the Pentateuch . Considered influential as one of the first authors to take up the question of the overarching theme of

5014-519: The pharaoh of Egypt asks him to interpret a dream he had about an upcoming famine, which Joseph does through God. He is then made second in command of Egypt by the grateful pharaoh, and later on, he is reunited with his father and brothers, who fail to recognize him and plead for food as the famine had reached Canaan as well. After much manipulation to see if they still hate him, Joseph reveals himself, forgives them for their actions, and lets them and their households into Egypt, where Pharaoh assigns to them

5123-403: The primeval history (chapters 1–11) and the ancestral history (chapters 12–50). The primeval history sets out the author's concepts of the nature of the deity and of humankind's relationship with its maker: God creates a world which is good and fit for humans, but when man corrupts it with sin, God decides to destroy his creation, sparing only the righteous Noah and his family to re-establish

5232-604: The "father of Egyptian archaeology". Petrie was born on 3 June 1853 in Charlton , Kent , England, the son of William Petrie (1821–1908) and Anne (née Flinders) (1812–1892). Anne was the daughter of British Captain Matthew Flinders , who led the first circumnavigation of Australia (and after whom Petrie was named). William Petrie was an electrical engineer who developed carbon arc lighting and later developed chemical processes for Johnson, Matthey & Co. Petrie

5341-559: The 12 best examples for the museum to keep and return 48 to Petrie, who sent them to London for a special showing at the British Museum . Resuming work, he discovered the village of the Pharaonic tomb-workers. In 1890, Petrie made the first of his many forays into Palestine , leading to much important archaeological work. His six-week excavation of Tell el-Hesi (which was mistakenly identified as Lachish ) that year represents

5450-448: The 16th to the 19th century treated the book of Genesis as factual. As evidence in the fields of paleontology , geology and other sciences was uncovered, scholars tried to fit these discoveries into the Genesis creation account. For example, Johann Jakob Scheuchzer in the 18th century believed that fossils were the remains of creatures killed during the flood. This literal understanding of Genesis fell out of favor with scholars during

5559-533: The 3rd century BC. As for why the book was created, a theory which has gained considerable interest, although still controversial, is that of Persian imperial authorisation. This proposes that the Persians of the Achaemenid Empire , after their conquest of Babylon in 539 BC, agreed to grant Jerusalem a large measure of local autonomy within the empire, but required the local authorities to produce

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5668-491: The Pentateuch, Clines' conclusion was that the overall theme is "the partial fulfilment—which implies also the partial nonfulfillment—of the promise to or blessing of the Patriarchs". (By calling the fulfilment "partial", Clines was drawing attention to the fact that at the end of Deuteronomy the people of Israel are still outside Canaan.) The patriarchs , or ancestors, are Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, with their wives (Joseph

5777-527: The Persian promise of greatly increased local autonomy for all provided a powerful incentive to cooperate in producing a single text. Genesis is an example of a work in the "antiquities" genre, as the Romans knew it, a popular genre telling of the appearance of humans and their ancestors and heroes, with elaborate genealogies and chronologies fleshed out with stories and anecdotes. Notable examples are found in

5886-544: The Petrie family were describing the unearthing of the Brading Roman Villa in the Isle of Wight. The boy was horrified to hear the rough shovelling out of the contents, and protested that the earth should be pared away, inch by inch, to see all that was in it and how it lay. "All that I have done since," he wrote when he was in his late seventies, "was there to begin with, so true it is that we can only develop what

5995-530: The Pi-Ramesses of Ramesses II. Still earlier, the 10th-century Bible exegete Rabbi Saadia Gaon believed that the biblical site of Ramesses had to be identified with Ain Shams . When the 21st Dynasty moved the capital to Tanis , Pi-Ramesses was largely abandoned and the old capital became a quarry for ready-made monuments, but it was not forgotten. Its name appears in a list of 21st Dynasty cities, and it had

6104-666: The Royal College of Surgeons. There is a popular legend that Hilda brought back her husband's head in a hat box from Jerusalem after the war. But letters in the Petrie Museum archive illustrate that this legend is not true. Petrie married Hilda Urlin (1871–1957) in London on 26 November 1896. The couple had two children, John (1907–1972) and Ann (1909–1989). The family originally lived in Hampstead, London , where an English Heritage blue plaque has been placed on

6213-682: The age of the world since creation. This Anno Mundi system of counting years is the basis of the Hebrew calendar and Byzantine calendar . Counts differ somewhat, but they generally place the age of the Earth at about six thousand years. During the Protestant Reformation , rivalry between Catholic and Protestant Christians led to a closer study of the Bible and a competition to take its words more seriously. Thus, scholars in Europe from

6322-574: The analysis of the Abraham cycle, the Jacob cycle, and the Joseph cycle, and the Yahwist and Priestly sources . The problem lies in finding a way to unite the patriarchal theme of the divine promise to the stories of Genesis 1–11 (the primeval history ) with their theme of God's forgiveness in the face of man's evil nature. One solution is to see the patriarchal stories as resulting from God's decision not to remain alienated from humankind: God creates

6431-489: The ancestors of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel, and a daughter, Dinah . Shechem, son of Hamor the Hivite, rapes Dinah and asks his father to get Dinah for him as his wife, according to Chapter 34. Jacob agrees to the marriage but requires that all the males of Hamor's tribe be circumcised, including Hamor and Shechem. After this was performed and all the men were still weak, Jacob's sons Simeon and Levi murdered all

6540-401: The architecture of Giza therein, were exemplary in its methodology and accuracy, disproving Smyth's theories and still providing 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

6649-576: The auspices of the American School of Research . he discovered ruins of ten cities in Tell el-Hesi . He began excavating several important sites in the south-west of Palestine, including Tell Jemmeh and Tell el-Ajjul . In parallel with his work in Palestine, Petrie became interested in early Egypt. In 1928, while digging a cemetery at Luxor, this proved so huge that he devised an entirely new excavation system, including comparison charts for finds, which

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6758-652: The basis of the race apparently being a mulatto of Libyan-negro mixture judging from the earliest skeletons at Medum." Petrie also engaged in fierce controversies with the British Museum's Egyptology expert E. A. Wallis Budge , who contended that the religion of the Egyptians was not introduced by invaders, but was essentially identical to that of the people of northeastern and central Africa; however, most of their colleagues judged Petrie's opinion to be more scientific. His involvement in Palestinian archaeology

6867-400: The book into the following sections: It is not clear, however, what this meant to the original authors, and most modern commentators divide it into two parts based on the subject matter, a primeval history (chapters 1–11) and a patriarchal history (chapters 12–50). While the first is far shorter than the second, it sets out the basic themes and provides an interpretive key for understanding

6976-452: The building in which they lived at 5 Cannon Place. John Flinders Petrie became a noted mathematician, who gave his name to the Petrie polygon . Flinders Petrie's painstaking recording and study of artefacts set new standards in archaeology. He wrote: "I believe the true line of research lies in the noting and comparison of the smallest details." By linking styles of pottery with periods, he

7085-492: The city as the Venice of Egypt. A surprising discovery in the excavated stables were small cisterns located adjacent to each of the estimated 460 horse tether points. Using mules , which are the same size as the horses of Ramesses' day, it was found a double tethered horse would naturally use the cistern as a toilet leaving the stable floor clean and dry. It was originally thought the demise of Egyptian authority abroad during

7194-528: 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". Returning to England at the end of 1880, Petrie wrote a number of articles and then met Amelia Edwards , journalist and patron of the Egypt Exploration Fund (now the Egypt Exploration Society ), who became his strong supporter and later appointed him as professor at her Egyptology chair at University College London . Impressed by his scientific approach,

7303-472: The entire book. The primeval history has a symmetrical structure hinging on the flood story (chapters 6–9) with the events before the flood mirrored by the events after. The ancestral history is structured around the three patriarchs Abraham, Jacob and Joseph. The stories of Isaac arguably do not make up a coherent cycle of stories and function as a bridge between the cycles of Abraham and Jacob. The Genesis creation narrative comprises two different stories;

7412-432: The first scientific excavation of an archaeological site in the Holy Land . Petrie surveyed a group of tombs in the Wadi al-Rababah (the biblical Hinnom ) of Jerusalem , largely dating to the Iron Age and early Roman periods. Here, in these ancient monuments, Petrie discovered that two different types of cubit had been used as units of length. From 1891, he worked on the temple of Aten at Tell-el-Amarna , discovering

7521-406: The first two chapters roughly correspond to these. In the first, Elohim , the generic Hebrew word for God, creates the heavens and the earth including humankind, in six days, and rests on the seventh . In the second, God, now referred to as " Yahweh Elohim" (rendered as "the L ORD God" in English translations), creates two individuals, Adam and Eve , as the first man and woman, and places them in

7630-621: The following year. He had discovered and correctly identified the character of the Proto-Sinaitic script , the ancestor of almost all alphabetic scripts. In 1923, Petrie was knighted for services to British Archaeology and Egyptology. Students of UCL commemorated the investiture by writing and performing a musical play. A hundred years later, the questions had changed: "Between investigations on eugenics, decolonial practice, and calls for repatriation, what has become of Flinderella?" The focus of his work shifted permanently to Palestine in 1926. From 1927 until 1938, he excavated in Palestine under

7739-426: The generations", with the first use of the phrase referring to the "generations of heaven and earth" and the remainder marking individuals. The toledot formula, occurring eleven times in the book of Genesis, serves as a heading which marks a transition to a new subject. The creation account of Genesis 1 functions as a prologue for the whole book and is not introduced with a toledot . The toledot divide

7848-591: The less important buildings was reused and recycled for the creation of new temples and buildings. There is no historical evidence supporting the settling, enslavement, or even existence of Jewish people in ancient Egypt or a Jewish exodus therefrom, and no historical evidence supports the Judeo-Christian story of such an exodus. Nevertheless, chapter 47 of the Book of Genesis states that the Hebrews were given

7957-687: The males. Jacob complained that their act would mean retribution by others, namely the Canaanites and Perizzites. Jacob and his tribe took all the Hivite women and children as well as livestock and other property for themselves. Joseph , Jacob's favourite son of the twelve, makes his brothers jealous (especially because of special gifts Jacob gave him) and because of that jealousy they sell Joseph into slavery in Egypt . Joseph endures many trials including being innocently sentenced to jail but he stays faithful to God. After several years, he prospers there after

8066-569: 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 the pyramids there were constructed; many theories had been advanced on this, and Petrie read them all, but none was based on first hand observation or logic. Petrie's published reports of this triangulation survey, and his analysis of

8175-493: The mummies that they were kept with their living families for generations before burial. Under Auguste Mariette 's arrangements, he sent 50% of these portraits to the Egyptian department of antiquities . However, when he later found that Gaston Maspero placed little value on them and left them open to the elements in a yard behind the museum to deteriorate, he angrily demanded that they all be returned, forcing Maspero to pick

8284-475: The north-west of Pi-Ramesses, as the new capital of Lower Egypt. The pharaohs of the Twenty-first Dynasty transported all the old Ramesside temples, obelisks, stelae, statues and sphinxes from Pi-Ramesses to the new site. The obelisks and statues, the largest weighing over 200 tons, were transported in one piece while major buildings were dismantled into sections and reassembled at Tanis. Stone from

8393-409: The patriarchs that he will be faithful to their descendants (i.e. to Israel), and Israel is expected to have faith in God and his promise. ("Faith" in the context of Genesis and the Hebrew Bible means an agreement to the promissory relationship, not a body of a belief.) The promise itself has three parts: offspring, blessings, and land. The fulfilment of the promise to each patriarch depends on having

8502-474: The personality of the archaeologist, who, he felt, needed to possess broad knowledge as well as insatiable curiosity. His own abundance of that characteristic was never questioned. In 1913, Petrie sold his large collection of Egyptian antiquities to University College , London, where it is now housed in the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology . One of his trainees, Howard Carter , went on to discover

8611-486: The professorship, training many of the best archaeologists of the day. In 1904, Petrie published Methods and Aims in Archaeology, the definitive work of his time, in which he defined the goals and methodology of his profession along with the more practical aspects of archaeology—such as details of excavation, including the use of cameras in the field. Insights include the contention that research results were dependent on

8720-497: The promises given at 3:15, 20. After many generations of Adam have passed from the lines of Cain and Seth, the world becomes corrupted by human sin and Nephilim , and God wants to wipe out humanity for their wickedness. However, Noah is righteous and blameless. So first, he instructs the Noah to build an ark and put examples of all the animals on it, seven pairs of every clean animal and one pair of every unclean. Then God sends

8829-579: The relationship between man and God. The ancestral history (chapters 12–50) tells of the prehistory of Israel , God's chosen people . At God's command, Noah's descendant Abraham journeys from his birthplace (described as Ur of the Chaldeans and whose identification with Sumerian Ur is tentative in modern scholarship ) into the God-given land of Canaan , where he dwells as a sojourner , as does his son Isaac and his grandson Jacob . Jacob's name

8938-613: The shortened form "Ramesses", in place of the original Pi-Ramesses, is first found in 1st millennium BCE texts, although it also appears in texts from the 2nd millennium BCE. Ramesses II moved the capital of Egypt to Pi-Ramesses because of its military potential, thus he built storehouses, docks and military facilities in the city, which could explain why Exodus 1:11 calls the site a "treasure city". Flinders Petrie Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie FRS FBA ( ( 1853-06-03 ) 3 June 1853 – ( 1942-07-28 ) 28 July 1942), commonly known as simply Sir Flinders Petrie ,

9047-415: The sins of their people. Abraham protests, but fails to get God to agree not to destroy the cities (reasoning with Abraham that not even ten righteous persons were found there; and among the righteous was Abraham's nephew Lot ). Angels save Abraham's nephew Lot (who was living there at the same time) and his family, but his wife looks back on the destruction, (even though God commanded not to) and turns into

9156-526: The site of the highest Ramesside pottery location, Tell el-Dab'a and Qantir. Although there were no traces of any previous habitation visible on the surface, discoveries soon identified Tell el-Dab'a as the Hyksos capital Avaris . Qantir was recognized as the site of the Ramesside capital Pi-Ramesses. Qantir/Pi-Ramesses lies some 30 km (19 mi) to the south of Tanis; Tell el-Dab´a, the site of Avaris,

9265-471: The site. In the 1960s, Manfred Bietak recognised that Pi-Ramesses was known to have been located on the then-easternmost branch of the Nile . He painstakingly mapped all the branches of the ancient Delta and established that the Pelusiac branch was the easternmost during Ramesses' reign while the Tanitic branch (i.e. the branch on which Tanis was located) did not exist at all. Excavations were therefore begun at

9374-415: The society's Archaeological Journal by his good friend and fellow archaeologist Flaxman Charles John Spurrell . Petrie published a total of 97 books. Book of Genesis The Book of Genesis (from Greek Γένεσις , Génesis ; Biblical Hebrew : בְּרֵאשִׁית ‎ , romanized:  Bərēʾšīṯ , lit.   'In [the] beginning'; Latin : Liber Genesis ) is the first book of

9483-512: The sources later combined by various editors. Scholars were able to distinguish sources based on the designations for God. For example, the Yahwist source uses Yahweh, while the Elohistic and Priestly sources use Elohim. Scholars also use repeated and duplicate stories to identify separate sources. In Genesis, these include the two creation stories, three different wife–sister narratives , and

9592-698: The text of surviving copies varies. There are four major groupings of surviving manuscripts: the Masoretic Text , the Samaritan Pentateuch (in Samaritan script ), the Septuagint (a Greek translation), and fragments of Genesis found in the Dead Sea Scrolls . The Dead Sea Scrolls are oldest but cover only a small proportion of the book. Genesis appears to be structured around the recurring phrase elleh toledot , meaning "these are

9701-407: The tomb of Tutankhamun in 1922.     Mr. Flinders Petrie, a contributor of interesting experiments on kindred subjects to Nature , informs me that he habitually works out sums by aid of an imaginary sliding rule , which he sets in the desired way and reads off mentally.     He does not usually visualise the whole rule, but only that part of it with which he

9810-515: The two versions of Abraham sending Hagar and Ishmael into the desert. According to the documentary hypothesis, J was produced during the 9th century BC in the southern Kingdom of Judah and was believed to be the earliest source. E was written in the northern Kingdom of Israel during the 8th century BC. D was written in Judah in the 7th century BC and associated with the religious reforms of King Josiah c.  625 BC . The latest source

9919-460: The university offered him work as the successor to Édouard Naville . Petrie accepted the position and was given the sum of £250 per month to cover the excavation expenses. In November 1884, Petrie arrived in Egypt to begin his excavations. He first went to a New Kingdom site at Tanis , with 170 workmen. He cut out the middle man role of foreman on this and all subsequent excavations, taking complete overall control himself and removing pressure on

10028-463: The variety of different and often conflicting versions of stories, and to relate the stories to each other, they fitted them into a genealogical chronology." Tremper Longman describes Genesis as theological history: "the fact that these events took place is assumed, and not argued. The concern of the text is not to prove the history but rather to impress the reader with the theological significance of these acts". The original manuscripts are lost, and

10137-503: The vulnerability felt by ancient Israelites and that "such stories can be a major way of gaining hope and resisting domination". Examples include: In both Judaism and Christianity , a genre of literature emerged dedicated to interpreting and commenting on the Genesis creation narrative, known as the Hexaemeron . By totaling the spans of time in the genealogies of Genesis, religious authorities have calculated what they consider to be

10246-485: The work of Greek historians of the 6th century BC: their intention was to connect notable families of their own day to a distant and heroic past, and in doing so they did not distinguish between myth , legend , and facts. Professor Jean-Louis Ska of the Pontifical Biblical Institute calls the basic rule of the antiquarian historian the "law of conservation": everything old is valuable, nothing

10355-565: The workmen from the foreman to discover finds quickly but sloppily. Though he was regarded as an amateur and dilettante by more established Egyptologists, this made him popular with his workers, who made several small but significant finds that would have been lost under the old system. In 1886, while working for the Egypt Exploration Fund, Petrie excavated at Tell Nebesheh in the Eastern Nile Delta. This site

10464-515: The world and humans, humans rebel, and God "elects" (chooses) Abraham. To this basic plot (which comes from the Yahwist), the Priestly source has added a series of covenants dividing history into stages, each with its own distinctive "sign". The first covenant is between God and all living creatures, and is marked by the sign of the rainbow; the second is with the descendants of Abraham ( Ishmaelites and others as well as Israelites), and its sign

10573-401: The world" attains salvation from famine, and by bringing the children of Israel down to Egypt he becomes the means through which the promise can be fulfilled. Scholars generally agree that the theme of divine promise unites the patriarchal cycles, but many would dispute the efficacy of trying to examine Genesis' theology by pursuing a single overarching theme, instead citing as more productive

10682-467: Was P, which was written during the 5th century in Babylon . Based on these dates, Genesis and the rest of the Pentateuch did not reach its final, present-day form until after the Babylonian Exile. Julius Wellhausen argued that the Pentateuch was finalized in the time of Ezra . Ezra 7 :14 records that Ezra traveled from Babylon to Jerusalem in 458 BC with God's law in his hand. Wellhausen argued that this

10791-591: Was a British Egyptologist and a pioneer of systematic methodology in archaeology and the preservation of artefacts. He held the first chair of Egyptology in the United Kingdom , and excavated many of the most important archaeological sites in Egypt in conjunction with his wife, Hilda Urlin . Some consider his most famous discovery to be that of the Merneptah Stele , an opinion with which Petrie himself concurred. Undoubtedly at least as important

10900-550: Was a dedicated believer in the superiority of the Northern peoples over the Latinate and Southern peoples. In his 1906 sociological series "Question of the day", he expressed these views, ascribing social problems of England to racial degeneration brought on by communism , trade unionism , and government assistance to people groups he found inferior. His racist views spilled over into his academic opinions. Believing that society

11009-425: Was composed in the time of King Solomon by a priest or Levite . This author used the Hebrew word elohim for God. This original work was expanded in the 8th century BC, with the name Yahweh used for God. In the 7th century BC, during the time of Jeremiah , the final parts of the Pentateuch were added, specifically the main parts of Deuteronomy. This would mean the Pentateuch achieved its final form before

11118-592: Was created in celebration of Petrie's seventieth birthday, when funds were raised to commission and produce 20 medals to be awarded "once in every three years for distinguished work in Archaeology, preferably to a British subject". The first medal was awarded to Petrie himself (1925), and the first few recipients included Sir Aurel Stein (1928), Sir Arthur Evans (1931), Abbé Henri Breuil (1934), J.D. Beazley (1937), Sir Mortimer Wheeler (1950), Alan Wace (1953), and Sir Leonard Woolley (1957). Petrie remains controversial for his pro- eugenics and racist views, and

11227-563: Was examined in the exhibition "A Future for the Past: Petrie's Palestinian Collection". In August 2012, more than a hundred people gathered at Petrie's grave, to commemorate the 70th anniversary of his death. His headstone is marked only with his name and an ankh symbol, the Egyptian hieroglyph for "life". A number of Petrie's discoveries were presented to the Royal Archaeological Society and described in

11336-810: Was in charge of the edition of many texts discovered by his British colleague, and Petrie offered important collections of artefacts to the University of Strasbourg. In 1897, the Kaiser-Wilhelms-Universität Straßburg gratefully conferred to Petrie the title of doctor honoris causa, and in June 1902 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS). He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1905. From 1889 to 1899, Petrie directed

11445-417: Was probably composed around the 5th century BC , although some scholars believe that primeval history (chapters 1–11), may have been composed and added as late as the 3rd century BC. Based on scientific interpretation of archaeological , genetic , and linguistic evidence, some mainstream Bible scholars consider Genesis to be primarily mythological rather than historical . It is divisible into two parts,

11554-567: Was raised in a Christian household (his father being a member of the Plymouth Brethren ), and was educated at home. He had no formal education. His father taught his son how to survey accurately, laying the foundation for his archaeological career. At the age of eight, he was tutored in French, Latin, and Greek, until he had a collapse and was taught at home. He also ventured his first archaeological opinion aged eight, when friends visiting

11663-526: Was the first to use seriation in Egyptology, a new method for establishing the chronology of a site. Petrie was also responsible for mentoring and training a whole generation of Egyptologists, including Howard Carter . On the centennial of Petrie's birth in 1953, his widow Hilda Petrie created a student travel scholarship to Egypt. Many thousands of artefacts recovered during excavations led by Petrie can be found in museums worldwide. The Petrie Medal

11772-403: Was the newly compiled Pentateuch. Nehemiah 8 – 10 , according to Wellhausen, describes the publication and public acceptance of this new law code c.  444 BC . There was now a large gap between the earliest sources of the Pentateuch and the period they claimed to describe, which ended c.  1200 BC . Most scholars held to the documentary hypothesis until the 1980s. Since then,

11881-462: Was written anonymously, but both Jewish and Christian religious tradition attributes the entire Pentateuch —Genesis, Exodus , Leviticus , Numbers and Deuteronomy —to Moses . During the Enlightenment , the philosophers Benedict Spinoza and Thomas Hobbes questioned Mosaic authorship . In the 17th century, Richard Simon proposed that the Pentateuch was written by multiple authors over

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