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* 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* 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* 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* 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.* 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 passio
ns 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.
Baghdad, May 12, 1926
You ask about my plans for the summer. . . . My duty to the museum is of the first importance. I can’t go away and leave all those valuable things half transferred. . . . It will take months and months. . . .
Baghdad, May 26, 1926
. . . Already I know that I ought to have all my time for the Museum. As it is I now go there from 7 to 8.30 or so every morning and get to the office about 9. That has meant a pretty strenuous 4½ hours but I find that I can just get through the work. . . . One big room downstairs, the Babylonian Stone Room, is now finished and I am only waiting for the catalogue, which I have written, to be translated and printed, to ask the King to open it—just to show them that we are doing something. But this is the easiest of all the rooms. . . . The serial number of the Baghdad Museum has to be put onto everything and until each object is in the catalogue we can’t number it. . . . I have moved about half the things from the old room into the new Museum and they are lying about, some on tables, some on the floor, a desolating spectacle. . . . I don’t think I could possibly leave it like this.
Baghdad, June 9, 1926
I am enclosing the catalogue of the Babylonian Stone Room of the Museum and two picture postcards of the exhibits. . . . No. 7 is the thing I am proudest of—there is nothing like it in any museum in the world. . . . The King is going to open this room on Monday. . . .
THE DESERT TRAVELER
In March 1905, Gertrude came to Qallat Semaan, a two and a half days’ march from Homs, Syria, and stopped to reflect.
This is the place where St. Simon lived upon a pillar. While the servants pitched my tents I went out and sat upon St. Simon’s column—there is still a little bit of it left—and considered how very different he must have been from me. And there came a big star and twinkled at me through the soft warm night, and we agreed together that it was pleasanter to wander across the heavens and the earth than to sit on top of a pillar all one’s days.
Gertrude’s first desert journeys were undertaken at the age of thirty-one, in 1900, comparatively late in her life. Her first glimpse of the desert had been on holiday with her aunt and uncle eight years previously, when she had written ecstatically of the desert around Tehran.
Persia, June 18, 1892, Letter to Horace Marshall
Oh the desert round Teheran! miles and miles of it with nothing, nothing growing; ringed in with bleak bare mountains snow crowned and furrowed with the deep courses of torrents. I never knew what desert was till I came here; it is a very wonderful thing to see. . . .
It remained something to see, rather than experience, until she visited family friends, the Rosens, in Jerusalem where Friedrich was the German consul. She took lessons in Arabic and embarked on horseback expeditions to Palmyra, Damascus, Baalbek, and Beirut. But her long, groundbreaking expeditions did not begin for five more years, until she undertook the journey through the Syrian Desert to Asia Minor that she described in her book The Desert and the Sown: the title arising from her explanation written on a journey from Jerusalem.
. . . We came to spreading cornfields. The plan is this—the “Arabs” sow one place this year and go and live somewhere else lest their animals should eat the growing corn. Next year this lies fallow and the fallow of the year before is sown.
Meanwhile, her privileged life was full of traveling, mountaineering, hunting, society, gardening, and learning archaeology. Yet, as the prospect of marriage and children receded, she felt an increasing need for self-fulfillment. As an independent woman of great ability she was driven by the need to test herself, veering toward challenges tinged with danger and excitement. When she conquered Arabic and discovered desert travel, the challenges proliferated into an all-embracing personal experiment of which she would never reach the end. There was the risky business of staying alive and reaching her goal and the intoxication of asserting her own identity far from the world that regarded her as a spinster, an heiress, and a Bell. There were languages to perfect, customs to learn, history and archaeology to explore, techniques of surveying and navigation to master, photography and cartography skills to acquire, Middle Eastern politics to plumb, and, finally, information to gather and pass on. Up to the First World War, affairs of state were conducted as comprehensively at dinner parties, soirees, and embassy receptions as in government offices. She accessed this world and would become recognized in it as an expert.
Settling on arrival into a Middle Eastern hotel would become a happy ritual, an almost sacred preliminary to the increasingly complicated organization of Gertrude’s five desert expeditions. She would book two rooms with a veranda or view, and use one as an office. She would banish all furniture except for two armchairs and two tables, and trail cigarette ash behind her as she tacked up her maps and photographs of the family.
On her first visit to Jerusalem she bought only a lively Arab stallion on which she soon departed from the tourist tracks, riding astride for the first time instead of side-saddle, leaping stone walls and whooping for joy, one hand hanging on to her gray felt hat with its black velvet ribbon.
Deraa, April 30, 1900
. . . The chief comfort of this journey is my masculine saddle, both to me and my hor
se. Never, never again will I travel on anything else; I haven’t known real ease in riding till now. Till I speak the people always think I’m a man and address me as Effendim! You mustn’t think I haven’t got a most elegant and decent divided skirt, however, but as all men wear skirts of sorts too, that doesn’t serve to distinguish me.
Her first expedition was the seventy-mile ride down the east bank of the Dead Sea, with a cook and a couple of muleteers. On the Jordan plain she found herself waist-deep in flowers. The flora and fauna of the desert would never fail to enchant and surprise her.
Ayan Musa, March 20, 1900
. . . The wilderness had blossomed like the rose. It was the most unforgettable sight—sheets and sheets of varied and exquisite colour—purple, white, yellow, and the brightest blue (this was a bristly sort of plant which I don’t know) and fields of scarlet ranunculus. Nine-tenths of them I didn’t know, but there was the yellow daisy, the sweet-scented mauve wild stock, a great splendid sort of dark purple onion, the white garlic and purple marrow, and higher up a tiny blue iris and red anemones and a dawning pink thing like a linum.
April 2, 1900
My camp is pitched half way up the hill, with . . . deep corn fields . . . the storks walking solemnly up to their necks in green. . . . There has been an immense flock of them flying and settling on the hillside, and when I took a stroll I soon found what was engaging [their] attention . . . The ground was hopping with locusts. . . .
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