Kage Baker Imagines Flinders Petrie

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.

Source

Egyptologist William Flinders Petrie, as imagined by Kage Baker. 2002. The Queen in Yellow. In Black Projects, White Knights: The Company Dossiers. Golden Gryphon Press, Urbana, Illinois.