DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.3236#0062
PREFACE,
placing before the public another record of explorations in Egypt, it seems
a fitting opportunity to define the general principles which I have had in
view in conducting and publishing these researches. The need of some such
definition is apparent from certain misconceptions which I have observed;
and as it may serve to some extent as an end in itself, as well as an explanation
with regard to this work, I need not apologize for stating it.
Just as one person has, for economy of time and means, to perform many
different functions in carrying on such work ; so, in the same way, it is needful
for one expedition to be made to serve many different ends, in such wrise that
the explorer in striving for one end should not disregard the rest. In working
on any site the opportunities are many-sided, and our research should neglect
none of them if we would use well our advantages. The collector, whose
desire it is to see something beautiful in a museum, should remember the
larger and more scientific interests; the student of art, who seeks to recover
links in his dim pedigrees, must remember how much history can help him;
the linguist, whose idea of Egyptology is restricted to hieroglyphics, may
recollect that Egypt is not the name of a dead language, but the country of a
grand civilization. To look to modern times, our own thoughts and doings
will be found quite as well recorded by the homely Metropolitan Board of
Works, as in the archives of the War Office.
Our object then should be not only the discovery of an historical text, or a
geographical identification, or a new construction in the language, or the
development of an art, or the history of pottery, or the details of manufactures,
or the mode of living, but all of these together—the whole body of archaeology.
Archaeology is the history of men's thoughts and works ; it is to the history of
placing before the public another record of explorations in Egypt, it seems
a fitting opportunity to define the general principles which I have had in
view in conducting and publishing these researches. The need of some such
definition is apparent from certain misconceptions which I have observed;
and as it may serve to some extent as an end in itself, as well as an explanation
with regard to this work, I need not apologize for stating it.
Just as one person has, for economy of time and means, to perform many
different functions in carrying on such work ; so, in the same way, it is needful
for one expedition to be made to serve many different ends, in such wrise that
the explorer in striving for one end should not disregard the rest. In working
on any site the opportunities are many-sided, and our research should neglect
none of them if we would use well our advantages. The collector, whose
desire it is to see something beautiful in a museum, should remember the
larger and more scientific interests; the student of art, who seeks to recover
links in his dim pedigrees, must remember how much history can help him;
the linguist, whose idea of Egyptology is restricted to hieroglyphics, may
recollect that Egypt is not the name of a dead language, but the country of a
grand civilization. To look to modern times, our own thoughts and doings
will be found quite as well recorded by the homely Metropolitan Board of
Works, as in the archives of the War Office.
Our object then should be not only the discovery of an historical text, or a
geographical identification, or a new construction in the language, or the
development of an art, or the history of pottery, or the details of manufactures,
or the mode of living, but all of these together—the whole body of archaeology.
Archaeology is the history of men's thoughts and works ; it is to the history of