John Shae Perring (24 January 1813,

Boston, Lincolnshire Boston is a market town and inland port in the borough of the same name in the county of Lincolnshire, England. It lies to the south-east of Lincoln, east of Nottingham and north-east of Peterborough. The town had a population of 45,339 at ...

– 16 January 1869,

Manchester Manchester () is a city and the metropolitan borough of Greater Manchester, England. It had an estimated population of in . Greater Manchester is the third-most populous metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, with a population of 2.92&nbs ...

) was a British engineer,

anthropologist An anthropologist is a scientist engaged in the practice of anthropology. Anthropologists study aspects of humans within past and present societies. Social anthropology, cultural anthropology and philosophical anthropology study the norms, values ...

and

Egyptologist Egyptology (from ''Egypt'' and Greek , ''-logia''; ) is the scientific study of ancient Egypt. The topics studied include ancient Egyptian history, language, literature, religion, architecture and art from the 5th millennium BC until the end ...

, most notable for his work excavating and documenting Egyptian

pyramid A pyramid () is a structure whose visible surfaces are triangular in broad outline and converge toward the top, making the appearance roughly a pyramid in the geometric sense. The base of a pyramid can be of any polygon shape, such as trian ...

Career

In 1837 Perring and British archaeologist Richard William Howard Vyse began excavating at

Giza Giza (; sometimes spelled ''Gizah, Gizeh, Geeza, Jiza''; , , ' ) is the third-largest city in Egypt by area after Cairo and Alexandria; and fourth-largest city in Africa by population after Kinshasa, Lagos, and Cairo. It is the capital of ...

; they were later joined by Giovanni Battista Caviglia. They used gunpowder to force their way into several monuments and then to reach hidden chambers within them, such as the burial chamber of the

pyramid of Menkaure The pyramid of Menkaure is the smallest of the three main pyramids of the Giza pyramid complex, located on the Giza Plateau in the southwestern outskirts of Cairo, Egypt. It is thought to have been built to serve as the tomb of the Menkaure , Four ...

, documenting them as they went. When Caviglia left the team to work independently, Perring became Vyse's assistant and when Vyse himself left for England in 1837 Perring continued the excavation with Vyse's financial support. As part of his work, Perring created several maps, plans and cross-sections of the pyramids at Abu Roasch, Gizeh,

Abusir Abusir ( ; Egyptian ''pr wsjr'' ' "the resting place of Osiris"; ) is the name given to an ancient Egyptian archaeological pyramid complex comprising the ruins of 4 kings' pyramids dating to the Old Kingdom period, and is part of the ...

Saqqara Saqqara ( : saqqāra ), also spelled Sakkara or Saccara in English , is an Egyptian village in the markaz (county) of Badrashin in the Giza Governorate, that contains ancient burial grounds of Egyptian royalty, serving as the necropolis for ...

and

Dahshur DahshurAlso transliterated ''Dahshour'' (in English often called ''Dashur''; ' ) is an ancient Egyptian pyramid complex and necropolis and shares the name of the nearby village of Manshiyyat Dahshur () in markaz Badrashin, Giza Governorate, Giza ...

. He was the first to explore the interior of the Pyramid of Userkaf at Saqqara in 1839, through a robber's tunnel first discovered in 1831. Perring thought the pyramid belonged to Djedkare. The pyramid was first correctly identified by Egyptologist Cecil Firth in 1928 (though Firth died in 1931 and excavations there only recommenced in 1948, under Jean-Philippe Lauer). Perring opened the northern entrance into the

Bent Pyramid The Bent Pyramid is an ancient Egyptian pyramid located at the royal necropolis of Dahshur, approximately south of Cairo, built under the Old Kingdom King Sneferu. A unique example of early pyramid development in Ancient Egypt, Egypt, this was th ...

and added some graffiti inside the nearby

Red Pyramid The Red Pyramid, also called the North Pyramid, is the largest of the pyramids located at the Dahshur necropolis in Cairo, Egypt. Named for the rusty reddish hue of its red limestone stones, it is also the third largest Egyptian pyramid, after ...

, which can still be viewed today. Perring's work resulted in his three-volume ''The Pyramids of Gizeh'', published from 1839 to 1842. Vyse also published Perring's sketches in the third volume of his own three-part work
Operations Carried on at the Pyramids of Gizeh in 1837 with an Account of a Voyage Into Upper Egypt and an Appendix
'.

References

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Perring, John Shae 1813 births 1869 deaths British engineers British archaeologists English Egyptologists British anthropologists