One should keep these things in mind when considering Strzygowski's contributions in the pre-Nazi era of German art-historical scholarship, and the significance of his influence over people like Gertrude Bell.
By 1909, Bell had come to know a great deal about Strzygowski and his specialization in the art history of the Near East. Even as far back as 1896 she had been familiar with his scholarship, reading his books on the train between London and her family home at Rounton in North Yorkshire.57 Bell's interest in and familiarity with Strzygowski's scholarship had also prompted her to write in 1905 a favourable review of his comprehensive 1904 report on the artistic and architectural program of the desert palace of Mshatta.58 As mentioned in Chapter 1, Bell's review was published in Revue archéologique at the behest of her good friend and mentor Salomon Reinach.59 This review, and her own visit to that site, would have drawn her into the world of the Mshatta debate that had been raging for some time, as the site's date and ethnicity were frustratingly difficult to determine.60 It probably also made her familiar, for the first time, with the scholarship of a young German by the name of Ernst Herzfeld, who was formulating his own brilliant conclusions about Mshatta, and with whom Bell would later enter into a spirited correspondence.61
Bell would have known of Strzygowski's other works, including his polemical Orient oder Rom (Leipzig, 1901), which argued that the Orient must be given sufficient credit for its creative power, and that it was the source of a great number of artistic developments that spread to the West and influenced European medieval art.62 Bell also carefully read Strzygowski's next book, Kleinasien, ein Neuland der Kunstgeschichte (Leipzig, 1903), which proceeded in a similar vein. It argued that ‘Greek and Roman culture had relatively little impact on Asia’, and specifically Anatolia, ‘where local traditions had persevered’.63 In this vein, he distinguished between coastal settlements in Anatolia, which through their exposure to Hellenistic culture presented Greco-Roman art and architectural features, and those in the interior, which exhibited wholly ‘Oriental’ elements. In the interior of Anatolia, for example, one could find ‘churches with two towers in the façade, recalling Hittite and Jewish prototypes; doors and windows piercing the lateral walls, as in Syria; compound piers instead of columns; arches instead of architraves; vaults in place of coffered wooden ceilings’.64
When Bell first visited the site of Binbirkilise, in Anatolia, she was carrying a copy of Strzygowski's Kleinasien in her saddle bag, and it was this work that originally inspired her interest in the early Christian monuments in 1905.65 She and William Ramsay frequently consulted it when they drew up their plans and conclusions concerning the dates and evolution of late antique ecclesiastical architecture at this site in 1907. In the end, their published work, The Thousand and One Churches, which appeared in 1909 (London), was dedicated to Strzygowski. Moreover, Bell's contribution to this work clearly shows Strzygowski's influence, not only in her advocacy of the importance of Near Eastern artistic traditions, but also in how her building typologies and architectural categorizations were formulated, and the emphasis she placed on morphological developments in architectural form and decoration as factors determining developments through time and space.66
Bell's study of the ancient sites and antiquities she encountered during her 1909 journey continued to bear the imprint of her mentor Strzygowski, particularly in the use of his comparative, formal analysis of art and architecture. She also accepted the creative, persistent power of the East and continued to seek native Near Eastern elements in the ancient remains she inspected. That Strzygowski was often in her mind when she visited various sites in the Near East is indicated by statements expressed in her letters, such as ‘Strzygowski will be off his head with joy over this find: I must write to him now’ (regarding her discovery of the castle of Ukhaidir),67 and ‘Strzygowski will be wild with joy over them’ (the early fragments of wall stucco patterns she had encountered at Samarra).68 That she had a personal relationship with him is also indicated in her letters, some of which refer to visits with him in Graz or Vienna.69 Ultimately, Bell's most ambitious work, her report on the palace and mosque of Ukhaidir, strongly bears the imprint of Strzygowski's art-historical methodology, as I will further discuss in upcoming chapters. Altogether, Strzygowski's formidable presence in Bell's life left a deep mark in her Near Eastern scholarship.
Preparations for the 1909 Trip
By the time she was ready to embark from Aleppo, the official starting point of her journey, Bell was outfitted with all of the provisions and equipment necessary for a proper exploratory expedition into distant parts. She purchased her pack animals in Aleppo, as well as much of her food and fodder, knowing that she could not depend on finding adequate provisions along the remoter parts of the road she was taking.70 She had an ample supply of clothing for all seasons and temperatures, as well as other personal effects. Canvas tents would serve as private sleeping quarters for her and her men when other accommodations in towns were not available. The tents figure often in Bell's photographs, frequently pitched right amidst the ruins of ancient sites, on the outskirts of inhabited settlements or directly in the open countryside and desert.71
Photography
One of the most laudable aspects of Bell's Near Eastern travels was the photographic record she kept of her journey. Having already carried a camera on her 1905 journey through the Levant, then in 1907 when she photographed prodigiously with Ramsay at Binbirkilise in Anatolia, Bell swore by the value of images for properly documenting ancient sites and monuments. In her archaeological research, they were as valuable as her written descriptions and plans for comprehensively recording buildings and monuments, and they assisted in jogging her memory when she got home and engaged in typological, comparative research.72 For readers of her travels and archaeological reports, Bell's photographs greatly aided their ability to comprehend the places she described and to appreciate more fully their beauty or architectural significance. For us today, Bell's photographs provide an incredibly rich record of a past that in many cases no longer exists, or which has deteriorated considerably since her time.
The survival of Bell's nitrate negatives, which are housed at Newcastle University, indicate that she was carrying portable cameras equipped with film rolls, far better technology than the older and cumbersome cameras that required weighty glass plates.73 The majority of her photographs in 1909 were taken with a conventional single-format camera, but by this time Bell was also carrying a camera for panoramic images, realizing the value of taking wider shots of sites and landscapes. At the same time, she occasionally attempted to capture wider-angle views through a series of overlapping shots. These panoramic views, as J. Crow has emphasized, are particular effective for conveying the vast emptiness of the Mesopotamian deserts in contrast to the solidary grandeur of monuments standing in their midst, such as the Arch of Ctesiphon or the desert palace of Ukhaidir.74 As Crow also noted, these views are even more compelling when they include the shadow of the photographer herself, rarely seen on film otherwise.75
Field Equipment
Bell did not carry sophisticated mapping or surveying equipment in 1909. For planning archaeological remains, she relied solely on a compass to provide her with cardinal points, then used a simple hand tape measure and foot ruler to measure out the dimensions of walls and other features, which were entered into her field notebooks, these of varying sizes. Some features, especially if they were particularly ruined or of less immediate interest to her, were roughly sketched and then measured by foot paces, which were recorded in her field notebooks.76 She did not carry a theodolite for taking bearings and planning a proper map until her 1913–14 trip in Arabia.77 She did, however, carry an aneroid barometer, which helped her to gauge rough elevations above sea level and get an approximate sense of changes in the topography of the terrain through which she was travelling.78
Maps
Bell was equipped with the best maps available at the time. As with her earlier travels through the Near Eas
t, she relied on maps that had been prepared by the well-known and highly respected German cartographer Heinrich Kiepert (1819–99).79 Kiepert's life work had entailed producing detailed maps of many parts of the Old World, and given his interest and background in ancient history, many of these maps sought to identify the locations of ancient cities and towns known to have existed in various regions.80 Such maps were of tremendous interest and value to many European travellers, whose journeys, like Bell's, were deeply informed by the landscapes of antiquity and by the multitude of cities, military outposts, borders, roadways and ancient campaign routes that populated those regions.
By 1909, Kiepert's cartographic work had been given over to his son, Richard Kiepert (1846–1915), who continued to fill blank spaces on his father's maps. Thus, Kiepert's Provinces Asiatiques de l'Empire Ottoman (sans l'Arabie) (Berlin, 1884) was augmented by additional place-names, many of these supplied by more recent European travellers and scholars who had journeyed through these lands or whose research of Classical or Arab historians and geographers provided educated guesses as to where some ancient places should be located. Such historically rich Kiepert maps were included in the book of the German archaeologist Max Freiherr von Oppenheim, Von Mittelmeer zum Persischen Golf (2 volumes, Berlin, 1899–1900), an account of his Near Eastern journey undertaken in 1892–3. On them, one can see, for example, the locations of places that had been reported by Colonel F.R. Chesney during his 1835–7 steamer voyage down the Euphrates into Mesopotamia, and those of his travelling companion W.F. Ainsworth, these having also figured in the original H. Kiepert maps.81 But in addition are places that had been recognized by more recent European travellers, such as Robert Koldewey, Eduard Sachau, Melchior de Vogüé and Bernhard Moritz.82
Bell's own Kiepert maps would have been akin to those produced for Oppenheim. We also know from her diary entries that she had the benefit of looking them over with Oppenheim himself, together with Moritz, when she was in Cairo in January 1909.83 Upon these occasions, both Oppenheim and Moritz advised her on which routes to take in Syria, Mesopotamia and Anatolia. Further, Oppenheim seems to have provided additional notes for Bell about the left bank of the Euphrates River around the village of Serrin, for he had been there in 1899 on his way to the archaeological site of Tell Halaf further to the north-east, near Ras al ‘Ayn.84 Altogether, the quality of the maps Bell carried on her 1909 trip, along with the sage advice of colleagues who had actually travelled in the regions she was going to visit, prepared her well for the impending expedition.
Euphrates Journey
The Beginning – Aleppo
Bell's trip began in earnest in early 1909, after she had travelled by boat to Egypt and Beirut and by train to Aleppo. The last was, as she remarked, the gateway to Asia.85 Here, she bought her horses and provisions and hired her baggage handlers for the long trek that would take her down the Euphrates River, into Mesopotamia.
Ever interested in the modern affairs of a place and its residents, Bell wasted no time in meeting the inhabitants of Aleppo – ranging from wealthy businessmen to shopkeepers, soldiers and labourers – and discussing with them current political and economic developments. Foremost in their minds were the reforms to the Ottoman government that had recently taken place, the product of the Young Turks rebellion in 1908, and Bell sought to record their reactions.86 But her excitement was also kindled by the city's long history, traces of which could be found at every turn. Ross Burns has said that in Aleppo exists ‘a sort of time continuum, in which flashes of the past, rather than dissipating with time, accumulate in the present’.87 Aleppo is believed to be one of the world's oldest continuously inhabited cities, and Bell, as a consummate traveller and history enthusiast, set out to learn as much as she could of its eventful past.
Back in 1909, Aleppo still possessed most of its pre-modern character and charm, and Bell was excited to visit and photograph its many old mosques and khans as well as the great Citadel in its midst. She appears to have been particularly interested in finding traces of Aleppo's earliest history. This included, for example, her report – at the small, sixteenth-century Mamluk mosque of Qaiqan, near the Antioch Gate – of a thirteenth-century BCE block, inscribed in Hittite hieroglyphics, which had been set upside down into the mosque's walls.88 She spotted more Hittite sculptures in the fortifications of the Aleppo Citadel itself and purchased some Hittite and Assyrian cylinder seals from an antiquities dealer.89 With respect to later antiquity, Bell visited the twelfth-century Madrasa Halawiye, which incorporated some of the column-capitals of a sixth-century Byzantine cathedral into its domed prayer hall.90 In her visit to the Al-Shuaibiyah mosque, Bell was particularly taken with its twelfth-century Kufic inscription and carved decoration of interlacing foliage, deeming it one of the ‘loveliest monuments of the art of Islam in the whole town of Aleppo’.91
Bell was not breaking any new ground with her observations of these antique remains in Aleppo. Most of these sites and monuments were already well known and studied. What is valuable, however, are her photographs, which capture key architectural features of the city, some of which no longer exist or have experienced profound changes over the past 100 years. One may note, for example, that the minaret of the charming fourteenth-century al-Tawashi mosque is no longer standing, although the beautifully carved collonettes on its outer façade (Fig. 2.4) and muqarnas decoration in the main entrance, which she nicely captured in photos, were still intact in 2009 when the present author visited the mosque.92 Sadly, the tall, square-stone, eleventh-century Seljuk minaret of the Great Mosque in Aleppo, proudly rising above the mosque and photographed by Bell (Fig. 2.5),93 was brought down in 2013 amid an exchange of heavy-weapons fire in the Syrian civil war.
Bell also photographed the beautiful Khan al-Wazir. This seventeenth-century caravanserai was laid out in the typical format, with an open courtyard on the ground floor, surrounded by a two-storey elevation. The rooms on the ground floor served as a storage place for merchants’ goods, while its upper storey served as sleeping quarters for guests and the resident merchants, with balconies overlooking the courtyard below.94 Particularly notable is the khan's monumental doorway, its interior face characterized by two inset windows surrounded by delicately carved ornamentation and two-tone stone masonry (Fig. 2.6).95 By the time Bell visited the Khan al-Wazir in 1909, it had been transformed into a factory for dyed cloth, although its essential plan was intact.96 Its elaborate exterior façade, which also features delicate carved decorations around the windows, was obstructed in large part by the narrow streets and the closely built structures surrounding it.97 Since the 1950s, however, this exterior arrangement has been completely transformed by the construction of a modern road and parking lot, providing an unhindered view of the khan.98 The khan interior was turned into shops featuring antiquities, carpets and local artisans’ work. At the time of writing, it was known that parts of this structure had been reduced to rubble in 2012 in the Syrian civil war, but the full extent of the damage to this exquisite example of Old Aleppo's once-vibrant commercial life remained undetermined.
For Bell, Aleppo was a stimulating and fortuitous beginning to her long journey. With her servant Fattuh's help, her preparations had all gone well, and now with her 12 horses, a donkey, and seven men, she set out from Aleppo through the rolling, open country to the Euphrates River.99 Already she could see that the landscape was dotted with tells, the grassy mounds that marked the place of ancient settlements.100 As she set out on her eastward path, she recalled the great historical figures who had ventured this way before her:
With Xenophon, with Julian, with all the armies captained by a dream of empire that dashed and broke against the Ancient East, the thoughts go marching down to the river which was the most famous of all frontier lines.101
First Destination on the Euphrates – Tell Ahmar
Bell and her entourage arrived on the Euphrates River after passing through the town of Membij on 17 February 1909. Thrilled to be seeing this ‘noble stream’ for
the first time, flowing between white cliffs, she observed that its rolling water was ‘charged with the history of the ancient world’.102 Finding the ferryboat by the river's edge, Bell wasted no time transporting herself and her baggage animals to the other side, arriving at the village of Tell Ahmar, situated at the foot of the high-mounded ancient site from which the village got its name.103 This was the start of Bell's journey down the eastern bank of the Euphrates River, and her archaeological reporting became more detailed; Bell was aware that few who had travelled down this side of the river had made any systematic attempt to record its ancient remains.104
Tell Ahmar was an important archaeological stop for Bell. Her friend David Hogarth had been here only the year before, and while inspecting the site, he had come across several carved stone fragments, some covered with as-yet undeciphered Hittite hieroglyphic inscriptions. Anxious to copy these inscriptions, Hogarth had made paper squeezes of the stones, but owing to the humidity of the season, these had not turned out well, and many were illegible.105 Hogarth had therefore asked Bell to retake the squeezes.106
While walking over the site, Bell spotted the carved and inscribed stones in question in a little depression beyond the ancient north-western gate into the city, these all belonging to a single stele originally set up at that locale in antiquity.107 On one side, the stele had the carved image of a bull and at least one person. With the assistance of the local villagers, Bell dug the engraved stones out of the ground, then took a squeeze of each (Fig. 2.7).108 This entailed pressing wet, mouldable paper into the inscribed surface of the stone and hammering the back of the paper with a bristled squeeze brush. Once the paper was dry, it was removed from the face of the stone. It now had on it a mirror image of the inscription in raised relief. These squeezes were later taken back to England to Hogarth,109 who was able to piece together the entire inscription and publish it in an English archaeological journal, along with other findings from Tell Ahmar, Carchemish and neighbouring sites.110 The article appropriately acknowledged Bell's contribution to this inscription.111 Significantly, the report also used some of Bell's photographs of other Tell Ahmar carved reliefs (Fig. 2.8), not to mention photographs she had taken of stone reliefs from the site of Arslan Tepe, near Malatya, later in 1909,112 which provided good comparanda to the sculptures of Ahmar and Carchemish.113 Altogether, Hogarth's published report owed much to Bell, not only for her efforts at copying inscriptions, but also for her photographs, which provided important documentation of the art of the still-elusive Neo-Hittite–Aramaean kingdoms of Northern Mesopotamia.
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