Oxbow Classics in Egyptology

This series comprises facsimile re-issues of typological catalogues produced by W.M. Flinders Petrie based on his vast collection of Egyptian artefacts. Mostly excavated by Petrie during many seasons of campaign in the last years of the 19th and early decades of the 20th century, they now reside in the Petrie Museum of Egyptian and Sudanese Archaeology at University College, London. Published between 1898 and 1937, and long out of print, the catalogues were re-issued in facsimile by publishers Aris and Philips in the 1970s alongside titles newly commissioned, based on more recent examination of elements of the Petrie Collection by contemporary experts.

The Oxbow Classics in Egyptology series makes a selection of these important resources available again in print for a new generation of students and scholars, for whom the archaeology of Egypt continues to fascinate. Multi-disciplinary investigation and research continues unabated, encompassing methodologies, scientific and data processing techniques, theoretical approaches, and even whole paradigms that were unheard of in the 1970s and undreamt of when Petrie was working in Egypt. Yet all the titles included in this series continue to be invaluable sources of basic data, providing an unparalleled resource that can easily be cross-referenced with the actual materials they describe and discuss. They remain within the Petrie Collection where they may be accessed and re-examined as new research flourishes. As historic documents, the Petrie catalogues stand as exemplars of the craft of typological classification, the backbone of modern archaeology – much of which, though refined by absolute dating and another 100 years of research, still stands the test of time.