Slowly, desperately slowly it seemed to us as we watched, the remains of passage debris that encumbered the lower part of the doorway were removed, until at last we had the whole door clear before us. The decisive moment had arrived. With trembling hands I made a tiny breach in the upper left hand corner. Darkness and blank space, as far as an iron testing-rod could reach, showed that whatever lay beyond was empty, and not filled like the passage we had just cleared. Candle tests were applied as a precaution against possible foul gases, and then, widening the hole a little, I inserted the candle and peered in, Lord Carnarvon, Lady Evelyn and Callender standing anxiously beside me to hear the verdict. At first I could see nothing, the hot air escaping from the chamber causing the candle flame to flicker, but presently, as my eyes grew accustomed to the light, details of the room within emerged slowly from the mist, strange animals, statues, and gold - everywhere the glint of gold. For the moment - an eternity it must have seemed to the others standing by - I was struck dumb with amazement, and when Lord Carnarvon, unable to stand the suspense any longer, inquired anxiously, 'Can you see anything?' it was all I could do to get out the words, 'Yes, wonderful things....'
Howard Carter, The Tomb of Tutankhamen (1923)
Most folks are unaware that written records do not exist for roughly 99% of human history. What little we know (or surmise) about most of humankind's existence -- the first use of fire, the beginning of religions, the advent of agriculture -- come from the close study of physical remains (bones, tools, etc.). Even for the 1% of human history for which we do have written records, such records often are fragmentary and biased. (Recall that until just a couple of centuries ago, only elites could read or write, and the records they preserved reflect but a very tiny bit of lived human experience:)
The excavation of ancient sites, and the collection of various antiquities, were already thousand-year-old endeavors when archaeology began to be formalized as an academic discipline in the 19th century. As early as the 9th century CE Arab scholars had attempted to decipher Sumerian cuneiform script and Egyptian hieroglyphics. In his encyclopedic work Al-Iklil (of which only the 8th volume survives), Abu al-Hassan al-Hamadani advocated a proto-archaeological method that included
- observing and describing the site
- excavating and recording of finds with exact provenance, descriptions and measurements
- using knowledge of ancient writings to read ... inscriptions
- analysing the finds in light of religious and historical texts and oral history
Ahmad ibn Ṭūlūn, founder of Egypt's Ṭūlūnid dynasty, had given his blessing to such early antiquarianism, although he was more concerned with its application to treasure hunting. Stories of such treasure hunting are recounted in The City of Brass and other tales recorded in the One Thousand and One Nights. Several centuries later, the 13th century Arab scholar Al-Idrisi expanded and refined earlier proto-archaeological methods:
Chinese scholars also were early proto-archaeologists. As early as the 9th century CE they had begun to seek out ancient relics for use in state rituals. This sort of treasure hunting was criticized as early as the 11th century CE by the Chinese polymath Shen Kuo. In his influential Dream Pool Essays (1088), in which the magnetic needle compass is first described, Shen argued for an interdisciplinary approach to antiquities, the better to understand their manufacture and function. His contemporary, Ouyang Xiu, pioneered early ideas in epigraphy that would also prove important to archaeology:
Other important proto-archaeologists include the 15th century Italian humanist Flavio Biondo, who systematically explored and documented the ruins and topography of ancient Rome, and his contemporary, Ciriaco de' Pizzicolli, who recorded similar observations in Italy, Syria, Egypt, Greece and the Ottoman Empire:
But archaeology as we know it today properly began to stir only in the 18th century, with the German art historian who first articulated the differences between Greek, Greco-Roman and Roman art....
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