In Ancient Mesopotamia, a foundation deposit of the Akkadian Empire ruler Naram-Sin (2200 BCE) was discovered and analyzed by King Nabonidus, c. 550 BCE, who is thus known as the first archaeologist.
One son of Ramses the second named Khaemuaset dedicated his life to the restoration of ancient monuments and Hapi cult artifacts. Archaeology as a discipline has its earliest origins in 15th- and 16th-century Europe, when the Renaissance Humanists looked back upon the glories of Greece and Rome. Johann Joachim Winckelmann was one of the founders of scientific archaeology and first applied the categories of style on a large, systematic basis to the history of art. He was “the prophet and founding hero of modern archaeology”. Alexander Cunningham is known as one of the fathers of archeology. He founded the Archeological Survey of India in 1861. By all accounts, the story of archaeology in Egypt begins in the mid-1880s with the excavations of William Matthew Flinders Petrie, referred to as the ‘father of Egyptian archaeology’.
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