The Arts and Crafts of Ancient Egypt

"The Arts and Crafts of Ancient Egypt" by W. M. Flinders Petrie is a historical account likely written in the early 20th century. This work aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of Egyptian art by exploring its various forms and styles across different periods. The text emphasizes the unique characteristics of Egyptian culture and how these influenced the development of its artistic expressions. The opening of the book introduces Petrie's intention to aid readers in understanding Egyptian art through a selection of illustrations and descriptions that highlight the most significant works from various periods. He notes the complexity of associating artistic changes solely with political history, pointing out that artistic evolution can be influenced by external factors such as foreign cultures and local conditions. Petrie also emphasizes the necessity of appreciating art as a reflection of its environmental context, indicating that the unique characteristics of the Egyptian landscape have profoundly shaped the forms and functions of its artistic endeavors. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie, commonly known as simply Sir Flinders Petrie, 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 is his 1905 discovery and correct identification of the character of the Proto-Sinaitic script, the ancestor of almost all alphabetic scripts.