A battered Egyptian pot sat in a Cornwall garage after a 1950s taxi fare; decades later, its tiny label helped reconstruct a lost 19th-century excavation

A battered old pot sitting in a Cornwall garage hardly looked like a piece of archaeological history. It had been broken thousands of years ago, repaired long after, and carried an unusual family story. But when Guy Funnell and Amanda Hawkins found it among Funnell’s father’s belongings, they noticed a small cardboard label with it. That scruffy label turned out to be the key to tracing the pot back to an Egyptian excavation led by archaeologist Flinders Petrie in the late 19th century.

The discovery has now given researchers at the Petrie Museum in London a new way to track Egyptian objects that were scattered around the world, as per a report by The Guardian.

How did the pot end up in a Cornwall garage

Funnell and Hawkins found the pot while clearing out a garage packed with possessions belonging to Funnell’s father. The family already knew there was a strange story attached to it. According to the family legend, Funnell’s grandfather, Charles Funnell, received the pot from a taxi passenger in the 1950s. The passenger apparently could not pay the fare, so the pot was handed over instead. Funnell’s mother remembered that it may have been used to settle several unpaid taxi fares.

The family later connected the object to a BBC documentary, “The Man Who Discovered Egypt,” about Flinders Petrie.

That connection led them to the Petrie Museum, where Alice Stevenson, a curator, quickly realised that the object could be important.

“I got the email from them on my second week in this job,” Stevenson said. “I could hardly believe what they'd found. I literally jumped up and down in excitement. The pot is wonderful, a rare find indeed. The label is absolutely fantastic.”

The pot itself is small, black and red, and had already suffered damage in ancient times. It was later broken again and repaired with superglue.

The real breakthrough, however, was the label. It was a commercially printed card with an Egyptian-style border. It described the object as “Libyan Pottery” from 3,000 BC and said it had been discovered by Prof WM Flinders Petrie during his 1894-95 excavation. A faint pencil number, 1754, appeared on the label and matched the excavation records.

Why is the tiny label so important

The label may help solve a much bigger archaeological puzzle. Petrie was known for keeping detailed excavation records. His work helped transform archaeology because he used pottery to establish dates for sites. By comparing different styles of broken pots, he developed a timeline that could be used to date tombs, temples and settlements, as per a report by The Guardian,

But Petrie also sent huge amounts of material out of Egypt. Museums and universities that helped fund his excavations received objects, while some pieces were later sold. He also gave objects to individuals.

Until now, researchers did not know how systematic that distribution might have been.

Stevenson believes the small card is evidence that many similar labels may once have accompanied objects given away by Petrie.

“There were obviously many such cards, but I have never seen or heard of one before – there must be more out there, which would help us trace the distribution of this material through museums and private collections,” Stevenson said.

That possibility could help researchers connect objects now held in museums and private collections with the excavation sites where they were originally found.

In this case, Stevenson believes she may have found a possible link to Joseph Grafton Milne, a curator at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford who visited Petrie in Egypt during the 1890s.

The Ashmolean has a bowl from Milne’s collection that came from the same grave as the Cornwall pot. The Petrie Museum also holds tiny shells that were pierced to make beads and a piece of rock crystal from that grave.

Records show that many more pots came from the same grave, while thousands were recovered from the cemetery.

The pot also carries an unusual piece of Petrie’s own archaeological history. He originally identified the vessels as Libyan because their black, fire-scorched rims looked different from other pottery he had found.

He was wrong. French scholar Jacques de Morgan later established that the pottery was Egyptian and pre-Dynastic, making it about 600 years older than Petrie had first thought.

“It was one of the few occasions when Petrie was not only wrong, but admitted it publicly,” Stevenson said, “a very unusual occurrence.”

For a small pot that spent years in a Cornish garage, its journey has turned out to be remarkably long. It moved from an ancient Egyptian cemetery to Petrie’s excavation, then through an unknown owner, a taxi story and a family garage.

After conservation, the pot is due to go on display at the Petrie Museum as part of its Festival of Pots.