I recently ran across the science fiction writer Kage Baker who uniquely folds in the entirety of human history, a neat trick, in her "Company Novels". One of her short stories, called The Yellow Queen, includes an imagined Sir William Flinders Petrie (the Egyptologist) that can only have come from a full-blown crush. Since I had one of those too, I found this quote spoken by her Flinders-Petrie, describing why he does what he does, to be quite to the point.
How can we ever know the truth about the past? Historians lie; time wrecks everything. But if you're careful, boy, if you're methodical, if you measure and record and look for the bloody boring little details, like potsherds, and learn what they mean---you can get the dead to speak again, out of their ashes. That's worth more than all the gold and amulets in the world, that's the work of my life. That's what I was born for. Nothing matters except my work. Kage Baker (speaking as Flinders-Petrie) 2002For source information, among other entertainments, pick a link and click on through:
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