The exultation of discovery

‘The unknown town now had a name… All that day “Naukratis” rang in my mind, and I sprang over the mounds with that splendid exultation of a new discovery, long wished for and well found.’ The prospect of discovering ancient cities, lost for centuries in the depths of jungles or deserts, was part of the original lure (and original sin) of archaeology. One fine example came in 1885, when William Matthew Flinders Petrie revealed the ancient Greek enclave Naukratis in Egypt’s western delta, not far from Alexandria. Petrie recounts his discovery in Ten Years’ Digging in Egypt, a book that charts a mind-boggling decade of discoveries – a streak of one pyramid or ancient city per ye