Hilda Petrie

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Flinders and Hilda Petrie 1897
Flinders and Hilda Petrie 1903

Hilda Petrie , née Hilda Mary Isobel Urlin (born June 8, 1871 in Dublin , † November 23, 1956 in London ) was a British Egyptologist who worked for her husband Flinders Petrie for many years .

Hilda Urlin's family was friends with the geologist and palaeontologist Harry Govier Seeley , to whom the current system of dinosaurs goes back. Acquaintance with Seeley sparked her interest in excavations and geology . She attended courses in geology with him at King's College for Women in London and learned to draw. The painter Henry Holiday brought her to University College London in 1896 , where she was supposed to support the Egyptologist Flinders Petrie as a draftsman in depicting Egyptian clothing for a publication. Both became friends and kept in touch by letter during the following excavation season, which Petrie spent back in Egypt.

Back in the UK, Petrie asked for Hilda Urlin's hand the following year. She hesitated at first because Petrie was 18 years her senior, but eventually accepted the request. The two married on November 29, 1896. Hilda Petrie took part in all of her husband's research trips from then on. She stayed in England for a long time only during her two pregnancies. Hilda Petrie quickly became an important employee of her husband. She supported him as a draftsman and photographer and later as an excavator. Although she hardly came up with her own research and stayed in the background, Flinders Petrie never tired of paying tribute to his wife's achievements. It was not only in this fact that the couple differed from other archaeological couples such as Sarah and Giovanni Battista Belzoni , Tessa and Mortimer Wheeler , Katharine and Leonard Woolley and Max Mallowan and Agatha Christie of that time. Hilda Petrie also took on the hardships of the excavation life, which is worth mentioning because Petrie was downright notorious for his spartan lifestyle. The Petrie biographer Margaret S. Drower commented on Hilda Petrie's achievements with the statement that a field archaeologist never had such an ideal wife . Hilda Petrie once described her own work as follows:

Half a day's excavation brings in fragments enough to take three of us several days' time to mark up, classify, draw, photograph, and otherwise work over. It takes much of each day to group and sort these fragments: the fitting is often a great puzzle.
The yield of half a day of excavation results in so many fragments that three of us spend several days cleaning, classifying, drawing, photographing and doing other work. It takes a long time one day to sort and organize the fragments: putting them together is often a big puzzle.

In 1902/03 Hilda Petrie directed the excavations at Osireion in Abydos , in which Margaret Alice Murray and the artist F. Hansard also collaborated. It is likely to have been one of the first excavations that was under purely female management. Hilda Petrie would later work with Murray several times. Hilda Petrie contributed a chapter to her husband's publication on the tomb of Pharaoh Wadji . When her husband left Egypt in 1926, she followed him to Palestine . In total, the couple spent about 50 years together in Egypt and the Middle East . In 1931 Petrie dedicated his autobiography Seventy Years in Archeology to his wife. After Flinders Petries death, Hilda Petrie brought his manuscripts to print and brokered his library to the Sudan Antiquities Service in Khartoum .

Fonts

  • Egyptian Hieroglyphs of the first and second dynasties , drawn by Hilda Petrie, Quaritch, London 1927
  • Seven Memphite tomb chapels , Inscriptions by Margaret A [lice] Murray. Drawings by F. Hansard, F. Kingsford, and L. Eckenstein. Drawings and plans by HF Petrie, British School of Egyptian Archeology and Quaritch, London 1952

literature

  • Margaret S. Drower: Flinders Petrie: a life in archeology . Victor Gollancz, London 1984, pp. 231-248.
  • Morris L. Bierbrier: Who was Who in Egyptology . 3rd edition, London 1995, p. 329 (with list of obituaries).
  • Margaret S. Drower: Hilda Mary Isobel Petrie. In: Breaking Grounds. Women in Old World Archeology (with list of publications; PDF; 408 kB)
  • Jetty Boots-Kaat: Women and Egypt Research - Lady Hilda (Mary Isabel) Petrie, née Urlin . In: Kemet issue 1/2003, Kemet Verlag, Berlin 2003, ISSN  0943-5972 , pp. 78-80.
  • Margaret S. Drower: Letters from the Desert - the Correspondence of Flinders and Hilda Petrie. Aris & Philips, London 2004 ISBN 0-85668-748-0 .
  • Andrea Rottloff : Archaeologists (= The Famous . Vol. 1). von Zabern, Mainz 2009, ISBN 978-3-8053-4063-2 , pp. 77-82.

Web links

Commons : Hilda Petrie  - collection of images, videos and audio files

supporting documents

  1. ↑ quoted from: Andrea Rottloff: Archäologen. P. 81
  2. ^ Framing the Archaeologist
personal data
SURNAME Petrie, Hilda
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Urlin, Hilda; Petrie, Hilda Mary Isobel; Urlin, Hilda Mary Isobel
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British Egyptologist
DATE OF BIRTH June 8, 1871
PLACE OF BIRTH Dublin
DATE OF DEATH November 23, 1956
Place of death London