A Woman in Arabia (10 page)

Maden Sheher (The Lower Town of Binbirkilise), May 21, 1907

The habit of building everything on the extreme top of hills is to be deprecated. It entails so much labour for subsequent generations. . . . I had found . . . a ruined site with a very perfect church on the top of a hill near my camp, and in the church was a half-buried stone which I thought was probably the altar. So I took up some of my men with picks and crowbars and had it out and it was the altar. . . . My Cast! oh my Cast! it's more professional than words can say.

Maden Sheher, May 25, 1907

The Ramsays arrived yesterday. I was in the middle of digging up a church when suddenly 2 carts hove into sight and there they were. . . . They instantly got out, . . . Lady R. made tea (for they were starving) in the open and R. oblivious of all other considerations was at once lost in the problems the church presented. . . .

Now I must tell you something very very striking. The church on the extreme point of the Kara D., at which I worked for 2
days before R. came, has near it some great rocks and on the rocks I found a very queer inscription. The more I looked at it the queerer it became and the less I thought it could be Christian . . . I took it down with great care, curious rabbit-headed things and winged sort of crosses and arms and circles, and with some trembling I showed it to R. The moment he looked at it he said, “It's a Hittite inscription. This is the very thing I hoped most to find here.” I think I've never been so elated. We now think of nothing but Hittites all the time. . . .

I haven't told you half enough what gorgeous fun it's being! You should see me directing the labours of 20 Turks and 4 Kurds!

May 29, 1907

I get up at 5 and breakfast before the Ramsay family have appeared and go off before 6 to wherever we are digging, and stay there till 12 superintending and measuring as we uncover. . . . After lunch I go back to the diggings and stay there till 5 or later. R. generally appears on the scene about 7 or 8 in the morning and about 3 in the afternoon . . . he can't physically do more. I shall have all the measuring and planning to do and I'm at it some 12 hours a day on and off. Nor can it be otherwise for that's the part that I have undertaken.

Daile, June 14, 1907

You would be surprised to see the scene in the middle of which I am writing. Thirty-one Turks are busy with picks and spades clearing out a church and monastery. At intervals they call out to me “Effendim, effendim! is this enough?”

July 5, 1907

We spent the whole morning going from village to village along the side of the Karajadagh looking for ruins and inscriptions. The
manner of proceeding is this: you arrive in a village and ask for inscriptions. They reply that there are absolutely none. You say very firmly that there are certainly inscriptions and then you stand about in the hot sun for 10 minutes or so while the villagers gather round. At last someone says there is a written stone in his house. You go off, find it, copy it, and give the owner two piastres, the result of which is that everybody has a written stone somewhere. . . .

Early in 1909, Gertrude made one of her most important desert expeditions, discovering the immense castle of Ukhaidir, crossing the desert between hostile tribes to get there.

Ukhaidir, March 23, 1909

We are through! without mishap and without adventure and I am exceedingly glad I took the desert road since all has turned out so well. . . . It's extraordinarily peaceful and beautiful and all of us have a sense of relief as of people who have come safely out of perilous ways.

March 26, 1909

It is an enormous castle, fortress, palace—what you will—155 metres by 170 metres, the immense outer walls set all along with round towers, and about a third of the inside filled with court after court of beautiful rooms, vaulted and domed, covered with exquisite plaster decorations—underground chambers—overhead chambers—some built with columns, some set round with niches, in short the most undreamt-of example of the finest Sassanian art that ever was. It is not seen on the map, it has never been published, I never heard its name before. I hear from the Arabs that a foreigner
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came here last year and worked at it for a few days. As soon as I saw it I decided that this was the opportunity of a lifetime. It doesn't matter in the least if
someone else publishes it before I do; I myself shall learn more of Eastern art of the sixth century by working at it than I should learn from all the books that ever were. I place it at the time of Ctesiphon, but I expect that it was built not for the Sassanians but for the Lakhmid princes. . . .

I set out with a measuring tape and a foot rule to plan the whole palace. . . . I've brought up my whole camp from Kerbela. . . . I confess I felt some misgivings about the enterprise, but Fattuh
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is so capable and plucky, that if he did meet with robbers they would probably come off the worst. He was armed with Maurice's rifle, which has been invaluable. . . .

March 29, 1909

Last night my castle gave me a different entertainment. I had gone to bed early, but I was too tired to sleep, and I lay and turned over in my mind all the work I had been doing. . . . Suddenly a rifle shot rang out, and a bullet whizzed over us. All my men jumped up, and I could hear Fattuh putting the muleteers as outposts round the camp. I got up too, and came out to see the fun. Meanwhile three or four more shots had been fired. Presently 'Ali and several others hurried past us, all armed in some fashion, and Fattuh, all eagerness, ran off with them into the desert. I climbed on to a heap of ruins to watch them, but they soon disappeared into the glimmering moonlight. A few minutes later we saw shots flash out red in the distance; and after about a quarter of an hour 'Ali and his men returned, singing a wild song as they came, their rifles over their shoulders. . . . They declared that the enemy had been raiders of the Dafi'ah, a hostile tribe.

She published her own quarto volume on Ukhaidir in 1914, paying graceful deference to “my learned friends in Babylon” who had published their book two years previously, and regretfully turned her back on the subject.

A subject so enchanting and so suggestive . . . is not likely to present itself more than once in a lifetime, and as I bring this page to a close I call to mind the amazement with which I first gazed upon its formidable walls; the romance of my first sojourn within its precincts; the pleasure, undiminished by familiarity, of my return; and the regret with which I sent back across the sun drenched plain a last greeting to its distant presence.

Her final desert journey in 1913 to 1914 was followed by the First World War, after which she was in full employment in Cairo, Basra, and Baghdad. A decade passed before she had the time to take up archaeology once more. By then, in Iraq, she was becoming worried about protecting the archaeological sites and treasures of the country.

July 20, 1922

Today the King ordered me to tea and we had two hours most excellent talk. First of all I got his assistance for my Law of Excavations
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which I've compiled with the utmost care in consultation with the legal authorities. He has undertaken to push it through Council—he's perfectly sound about archaeology—having been trained by T.E. Lawrence—and has agreed to my suggestion that he should appoint me . . . provisional Director of Archaeology to his Govt, in addition to my other duties.

Baghdad, October 13, 1923

I've been spending most of the morning at the Ministry of Works where we are starting—what do you think? the Iraq Museum! It will be a modest beginning, but it is a beginning.

Baghdad, January 9, 1924

I'm planning a two days' jaunt by myself in the desert. I want to feel savage and independent again instead of being [Oriental] Secretary in a High Commissioner's Office.

Mr. Woolley
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at Ur has been making wonderful finds and has written urgently to me to go down. . . . I've a great scheme for visiting some mounds this side of Nasiriyah which I hope will come off.

Baghdad, January 22, 1924

We spent 3 hours walking over the site [of Kish] and examining the excavations. When we got back to the tents . . . there was no car, so I climbed to the top of the zigurrat, hailed in 4 horsemen and requisitioned their horses, on two of which J.M.
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and I mounted and prepared to ride into Hillah.

After an early breakfast, I went down to the river, crossed in a ferry to Khidhr village and presented myself at the house of the Mudir, who provided me (via the report) with a horse and escort to ride to Warka, which is Erech, the great Babylonian capital of the south. We rode hard for two hours on the mound; I was riding on a policeman's saddle. I've got a peculiar sort of skin that comes off if you look at it; it did. When we reached the mound we found quantities of people digging and rounded them up. They all screamed and cried when they saw me, but I gave them the salute and they were comforted. I said “Have you any anticas?” “No,” they answered, “by God, no.” I observed “What are those spades and picks for? I'll give you backsheesh for anything you have.” At that a change came over the scene
and one after another fumbled in his breast and produced a cylinder or a seal which I bought for the museum for a few annas.

February 13, 1924

I pursued my explorations round Kadhimain. . . . I espied half an elephant planted on the top of the courtyard wall—so I rode into the court and asked who lived there. . . . I asked [the proprietor] if there were an idol in the house. “Oh, yes,” he said, and taking me into the inner court, lifted up a mat, and there was the Assyrian statue. It's very roughly blocked out but so like a statue of Semiramis that was found at Assur that . . . it may be no other than she. It is said to have been brought from Babylon. Only the upper part remains, down to about the waist. It seems to have bobbed hair. . . . But I must have it for my museum. . . . I shall leave the elephant.

Baghdad, March 6, 1924

On Friday after lunch J.M. Wilson and I took the so called express and went to Ur to do the division. We arrived at 5.10 a.m. on Sat. . . . I had a bare half hour to get up and pack my bed and things. So I jumped up, put on my clothes, neither washed nor did my hair and J.M. and I, with old 'Abdul Qadir, my curator walked out to Ur in the still dawn. . . . We . . . went off to the zigurrat to see the uncovered stair. It's amazing and unexpected, a triple stair. . . . laid against the zigurrat with blocks of masonry between the stairways. It's latest Babylonian . . . and must cover an Ur 3rd dynasty stair of which as yet we know nothing. . . . By this time the workmen began to arrive, . . . and next Mr. Woolley, so we marvelled at the stair and all the rest and I went back to the house to wash, summarily, and do my hair. . . . Before 9 we started the division (it began by my winning the gold scarab on the toss of a rupee). . . . The really agonizing part was after lunch when I had to tell them that I must take the milking scene. I can't do otherwise. It's
unique and it depicts the life of the country at an immensely early date. In my capacity as Director of Antiquities I'm an Iraqi official and bound by the terms on which we gave the permit for excavation. J.M. backed me but it broke Mr. Woolley's heart. . . .

Baghdad, March 18, 1924

I fell into one of the worst passions I've ever been in. I found old 'Abdul Qadir mending the flowers from Ur with huge blobs of plaster of Paris so that the stone petals quite disappeared in them. I . . . told him he was never to mend anything again and sent for a friend of mine, an antiquity dealer to repair the damage, which he has done.

Kish, March 24, 1924

I . . . explained that my object was to leave, as far as possible, the tablets to them for they should be at the disposition of students. On the other hand, they would have to make up by parting with some other fine objects. “Who decides,” said the Professor [S. H. Langdon], “if we disagree?” I replied that I did. . . . There was one unique object, a stone tablet inscribed with what is probably the oldest known human script. . . . So I took it. Then we went to a little room where all the other objects were and began on the beads and jewels. There was a lovely pomegranate bud earring, found in the grave of a girl, time of Nebuchadnezzar, and he set against it a wonderful copper stag, early Babylonian and falling into dust. It was obvious that we here could not preserve the latter. . . . I took the pomegranate bud . . . turned to the necklaces and we picked, turn and turn about. . . . Isn't it fantastic to be selecting pots and things four to six thousand years old! I got a marvellous stone inlay of a Sumerian king leading captives and not being at all nice to them . . . .

Baghdad, May 4, 1924

I burst with pride when I show people over the Museum. It is becoming such a wonderful place. It was a great morning because there were 6 boxes from Kish to be unpacked. . . . Such copper instruments as have never before been handed down from antiquity; the shelves shout with them.

Baghdad, April 22, 1925

J.M. and I had got permission from the A.V.M. [air vice-marshal] to go up to Kirkuk by air mail in order to see a little excavation. . . . We went yesterday morning and came back this morning—2 ½ hours up and 2 hours down, with a following wind. I like flying. The only contretemps was that they forgot to put my little valise into the plane and I arrived with nothing. . . . However . . . once you have made up your mind that you have no luggage, it is rather an exhilarating feeling.

Baghdad, March 16, 1926

We got to Ur. . . . I had to take the best thing they have got. . . . I'm getting much more knowing with practice. I now can place cylinder and other seals at more or less their comparative date and value, so that I don't choose wildly according to prettiness. . . .

Baghdad, March 23, 1926

I have been . . . trying to learn a little about arranging a museum. Oh dear! there's such a lot to do. . . . I shall concentrate on exhibiting the best objects properly and get the others done little by little. Meantime the new museum building has to be re-roofed, for the present mud and beams could be cut through almost by a penknife.