Flinders Petrie

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.

3 June 1853

Born on the same birth day (3 June): Bogislaw X, Duke of Pomerania • Conon of Naso • Flora MacDonald (politician) • Giovanni di Cosimo de' Medici • Igor Shafarevich • João Manuel, Prince of Portugal • Micah Kogo