A Woman in Arabia (9 page)

Lady Bell writes that Gertrude told her later that Ulrich had said to her after their successful climb of the Engelhorn, “If, when I was standing on your shoulders and asked you if you felt safe, you had said you did not, I should have fallen and we should all have gone over.” And Gertrude had replied, “I thought I was falling when I spoke.”

It was 7 o'clock before we reached the foot of the rocks. It was too late and too dark to think of getting down into the valley so we decided that we would sleep at the Engen Alp at a shepherd's hut. . . . At 9.30 we hove up against a chalet nestled in to the mountain side and looking exactly like a big rock. We went in and found a tiny light burning; in a minute 3 tall shepherds, with pipes in their mouths, joined us and slowly questioned us as to where we had come from. . . . We said we . . . would like to
eat and sleep. One of the shepherds lighted a blazing wood fire and cooked a quantity of milk in a 3-legged cauldron and we fell to on bowls of the most delicious bread and milk I ever tasted. The chalet was divided into two parts by a wooden partition. The first part was occupied by some enormous pigs, there was also a ladder in it leading up to a bit of wooden floor just under the roof, where the fresh hay was kept. Here I slept. . . . It was so enchanting waking up in that funny little place high up on the mountain side with noisy torrents all round it. The goats came flocking home before we left . . . they bleated loud complaints as they crowded round the hut, licking the shepherd's hand.

In 1902, Ulrich put Gertrude through her paces, climbing several “impossibles” by way of preparation for the unclimbed northeast face of the highest mountain in the Oberland, the Finsteraarhorn.

Meiringen, August 3, 1902
The Attempt on the Finsteraarhorn

On Tuesday we set out at 1 a.m. and made for a crack high up on the Wetterhorn rocks which we had observed through glasses. We got up to it after about 3 hours' climbing only to find to our sorrow that . . . it would have been madness to attempt it for we could see from the broken ice on the rocks that the great blocks were thrown from side to side as they fell and swept the whole passage . . . ; we turned sadly back. I record this piece of prudence with pleasure.

The Second Attempt

The arête . . . rises from the glacier in a great series of gendarmes and towers, set at such an angle on the steep face of the mountain that you wonder how they can stand at all and indeed they can scarcely be said to stand, for the great points of them
are continually overbalancing and tumbling down into the couloirs . . . and they are all capped with loosely poised stones, jutting out and hanging over and ready to fall. . . .

Crossed the séracs just at dawn. . . . We breakfasted then followed a difficult and dangerous climb. It was difficult because the rocks were exceedingly steep . . . it was dangerous because the whole rock was so treacherous. I found this out very early in the morning by putting my hand into the crack of a rock which looked as if it went into the very foundations of things. About 2 feet square of rock tumbled out upon me and knocked me a little way . . . till I managed to part company with it on a tiny ledge. . . .

About 2 o'clock I looked round and saw great black clouds rolling up from the west. . . . We . . . pushed on steadily for another hour while the weather signs got worse and worse. . . . The first snow flakes began to fall. . . . We were then 1000 feet below the summit. . . . We sat down to eat a few mouthfuls, the snow falling fast, driven by a strong wind, and a thick mist marching up the valley below, . . . then we crept along the knife edge of a col, fastened a rope firmly round a rock and let Ulrich down on to a ledge below the overhang of the tower. He tried it for a few moments and then gave it up. The ledge was very narrow, sloped outwards and was quite rotten. Anything was better than that. So we tried the left side of the tower: there was a very steep iced couloir running up. . . . Again we let ourselves down on the extra rope to the foot of the tower, again to find that this way also was impossible.

But even with the alternative before us of the descent down the terrible arête, we decided to turn back; already the snow was blowing down the couloir in a small avalanche, small but blinding, and the wind rushed down upon us carrying the mists with it. . . . By the time we had been going down for half-an-hour we could see nothing of the mountain side to the right or to the left except an occasional glimpse as one cloud rolled off and another rolled over. The snow fell fast and covered the rocks with incredible speed. Difficult as they had been to go up, you may imagine what they were like going down when we could no longer so much as see them. . . .

We . . . got on to a sloping out rock ledge with an inch of new snow on it; there was a crack in which you could stand and with one hand hold in the rock face, from whence you had to drop down about 8 feet on to deep snow. We fixed the extra rope and tumbled down one after the other on to the snow; . . . I shall remember every inch of that rock face for the rest of my life. . . . We toiled on till 8, by which time a furious thunderstorm was raging. We were standing by a great upright on the top of a tower when suddenly it gave a crack and a blue flame sat on it for a second. . . . My ice axe jumped in my hand and I thought the steel felt hot through my woollen glove—was that possible? I didn't take my glove off to see! Before we knew where we were the rock flashed again . . . we . . . tumbled down a chimney as hard as ever we could, one on top of the other, buried our ice axe heads in some shale at the bottom of it and hurriedly retreated from them. It's not nice to carry a private lightning conductor in your hand in the thick of a thunderstorm. It was clear we could go no further that night, the question was to find the best lodging while there was still light enough to see. We hit upon a tiny crack sheltered from the wind. . . . There was just room for me to sit in the extreme back of it on a very pointed bit of rock. . . . Ulrich sat on my feet to keep them warm and Heinrich just below him. They each of them put their feet into a knapsack which is the golden rule of bivouac. The other golden rule is to take no brandy because you feel the reaction more after. I knew this and insisted on it. It was really not so bad. . . . I went to sleep quite often and was wakened up every hour or so by the intolerable discomfort of my position. . . . We tied ourselves firmly on to the rock above lest as Ulrich philosophically said one of us should be struck and fall out. The rocks were all crackling round us and fizzing like damp wood which is just beginning to burn . . . And as there was no further precaution possible I enjoyed the extraordinary magnificence of the storm with a free mind: it was worth seeing. Gradually the night cleared and became beautifully starry.

The day came wrapped in a blinding mist and heralded by a cutting, snow-laden wind. . . . When we stepped out of our crack in the first grey light about 4 (too stiff to bear it a moment longer) everything was deep in it. I can scarcely describe to you
what that day was like. We were from 4 a.m. to 8 p.m. on the arête; during that time we ate for a minute or two 3 times and my fare was 5 ginger bread biscuits, 2 sticks of chocolate, a slice of bread, a scrap of cheese and a handful of raisins. . . . Both the ropes were thoroughly iced and terribly difficult to manage, and the weather was appalling. It snowed all day sometimes softly as decent snow should fall, sometimes driven by a furious bitter wind which enveloped us not only in the falling snow, but lifted all the light powdery snow from the rocks and sent it whirling down the precipices and into the couloirs. . . . The couloirs were all running with snow rivers. . . . As soon as you cut a step it was filled up before you could put your foot into it. But I think that when things are as bad as ever they can be you cease to mind them much. You set your teeth and battle with the fates. . . . I know I never thought of the danger except once and then quite calmly. . . . We had to fix our rope in [the chimney] twice, the second time round a very unsafe nail. I stood in this place holding Heinrich, there was an overhang. He climbed a bit of the way and then fell on to soft snow and spun down the couloir till my rope brought him up with a jerk. Then he got up on to a bit of rock. . . . Ulrich came down to me and I repeated Heinrich's process exactly, the iced extra rope slipping through my hands like butter. Then came Ulrich. He climbed down to the place we had both fallen . . . , then he called out “Heinrich, Heinrich, ich bin verloren” and tumbled off just as we had done and we held him up in the couloir, more dead than alive with anxiety. We gave him some of our precious brandy on a piece of sugar. . . . We thought the worst was over but there was a more dangerous place to come . . . a steep but short slope of iced rock . . . now covered with about 4 inches of avalanche snow and the rocks were quite hidden. It was on the edge of a big couloirs down which raced a snow river. We managed badly; . . . Ulrich and I found ourselves on a place where there was not room for us both to stand. . . . He was very insecure and could not hold me, Heinrich was below on the edge of the couloir, also very insecure. And here I had to refix the extra rope on a rock a little below me so that it was practically no good to me. But it was the only possible plan. The rock was too difficult for me, the stretches too
big, I couldn't reach them: I handed my axe down to Heinrich and told him I could do nothing but fall, but he couldn't, or at any rate, didn't secure himself and in a second we were both tumbling head over heels down the couloir. . . . How Ulrich held us I don't know. . . . I got on to my feet in the snow directly I came to the end of my leash of rope and held Heinrich and caught his ice axe and mine and we slowly cut ourselves back up the couloir to the foot of the rock. But it was a near thing and I felt rather ashamed of my part in it. This was the time when I thought it on the cards we should not get down alive. . . .

And so we went on for 6 hours more of which only the last hour was easy and at 8 found ourselves at the top of the Finsteraar glacier. . . . It was now quite dark, the snow had turned into pouring rain, and we sank 6 inches into the soft glacier with every step. . . . Not a single match would light. Then we tried to go on and after a few steps Heinrich fell in . . . almost up to his neck and Ulrich and I had to pull him out with the greatest difficulty and the mists swept up over the glacier and hid everything; that was the only moment of despair. . . . Here we were with another night out before us. And a much worse one than the first, for we were on the shelterless glacier and in driving drenching rain. We laid our three axes together and sat on them side by side. . . . My shoulders ached and ached. . . . Before we expected it a sort of grey light came over the snow. . . . We could hardly stand but after a few steps we began to walk quite creditably. About 6 we got to where we could unrope—having been 48 hours on the rope—and we reached here at 10 on Saturday. . . .

Now that I am comfortably indoors, I do rather wonder that we ever got down the Finsteraarhorn and that we were not frozen at the bottom of it. What do you think?

In 1904, Gertrude made her last climb, the Matterhorn.

Zermatt, August 31, 1904

It is very imposing, the Matterhorn . . . the great faces of rock are so enormous, so perpendicular. . . . It was beautiful climbing,
never seriously difficult, but never easy, and most of the time on a great steep face which was splendid to go upon. . . . The most difficult place on the mountain is an overhanging bit above the Tyndall Grat and quite near the summit. There is usually a rope ladder there, but this year it is broken and in consequence scarcely any one has gone up the Italian side. There is a fixed rope which is good and makes descent on this side quite easy, but it is a different matter getting up. We took over 2 hours over this 30 or 40 ft. . . . At the overhanging bit you had to throw yourself out on the rope and so hanging catch with your right knee a shelving scrap of rock from which you can just reach the top rung which is all that is left of the ladder. That is how it is done. I speak from experience, and I also remember wondering how it was possible to do it. And I had a rope round my waist which Ulrich, who went first, had not. Heinrich found it uncommonly difficult.

Gertrude's mountaineering career ended after the 1904 season, when she was becoming increasingly drawn to desert adventures.

Gertrude had been fascinated by archaeology since a holiday in Greece in 1899, when she was thirty-one. With her father and her uncle, a classical scholar, she made an excursion to Melos, a six-thousand-year-old city, and was shown the excavation by Dr. David Hogarth, brother of her Oxford friend Janet. She was so interested that she stayed several days to watch and join the dig.

Two years later, she extended a holiday to join archaeological digs at Pergamos, Magnesia, and Sardis. She evidently enjoyed the excavation work more than the rather dull cruise that preceded it, chiefly memorable for a day's sightseeing in Santa Flavia with Winston Churchill, who was staying in a villa there to paint.

By 1904, Gertrude was immersed in plans for an imminent journey through western Syria and Asia Minor, her first expedition after Jerusalem. To give substance to her archaeological credentials, she had written an essay on the geometry of the cruciform structure, which she wanted to place in an eminent magazine, the
Revue Archéologique
, whose offices were in Paris. She wanted to make herself known to the editor, Professor Salomon Reinach, the scholar who had proselytized for the East as the origin of civilization. He was also the director of the Saint-Germain Museum of National Antiquities.

When she called on Reinach, he welcomed her warmly, taking to her immediately and opening up his address book for her. Armed with his letters of introduction, she was gladly received in every library and museum that she had time to visit. Reinach also gave her what amounted to a crash course
in archaeological history. Under his aegis she examined Greek manuscripts and early ivories, buried herself in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, spent a day in the Musée de Cluny, toured a new Byzantine museum not yet open to the public, and spent evenings poring over books in his library. She spoke to Reinach of her forthcoming journey, and he encouraged her to study Roman and Byzantine ruins and learn about the impact of these civilizations upon the region. From this point on, Byzantine culture would become Gertrude's special field of study.

She was well aware that she lacked the qualifications of an archaeologist—for instance, a knowledge of epigraphy. Between her carefully planned expeditions, therefore, she set out to learn new practical skills, so that she would be able to pinpoint the sites, make maps, and finally recognize what she found and fit it into the historical and archaeological context as she recorded it. She attended courses that taught her how to measure and draw up her finds, she learned to make casts, and she became a skilled photographer and a member of the Royal Photographic Society—as such, she was able to have her film professionally printed.

Even without qualifications, she had great advantages: her energy and enthusiasm, her willingness to go into dangerous territories, and, not least, the financial freedom to follow her ends. No mountain was too high for her, no cave too full of snakes and spiders, no journey too far.

Mapping the Euphrates in 1909, Gertrude examined 450 miles of sites before arriving south of Baghdad. Not far from Karbala, at Ukhaidir, she found an immense and beautiful desert palace in a remarkable state of repair. For a time, when it was found that her plan of the palace was the first to be made, she believed that she had discovered an unknown citadel. The following year she published a preliminary paper on Ukhaidir. But returning to the site in 1911, she found to her bitter disappointment that the monograph she intended to publish, with its 168 pages of plans and 166 photographs, would not be the first. She discovered that German archaeologists had been to the site during the two years of her absence
and were close to publishing their own book. Exhibiting much grace under pressure, she wrote in the preface to her monograph of her respect for the “masterly” German volume and even apologized for offering a second version:

. . . My work, which was almost completed when the German volume came out, covers not only the ground traversed by my learned friends in Babylon, but also ground which they had neither leisure nor opportunity to explore . . . with this I must take leave of a field of study which formed for four years my principal occupation, as well as my chief delight.

Gertrude's entry in the
Prolegomena
, the Who's Who of archaeology, names her as “the remarkable pioneer woman of Byzantine architecture.” After publishing
The Thousand and One Churches
about Binbirkilise in 1909, together with Professor William Ramsay, she concentrated on the high Anatolian plateau of Turkey, publishing the material she gathered there as her seventh book,
The Churches and Monasteries of the Tur Abdin,
in 1913.

Toward the end of her life, in Baghdad, she became increasingly worried about the wholesale looting of Iraq's national treasures. She discussed with King Faisal the need for a law of excavations, to protect the many important sites in Iraq and also to prevent all the country's treasures being exported to foreign museums. He made her the honorary director of archaeology and helped her to frame the writing of a law giving due weight to the rights of the nation and the excavators: these had proliferated after the war with scientific expeditions from many countries attempting to construct the history of the region. Once Gertrude had begun to think in terms of exacting the country's rights to its own past, she was determined to establish a museum of Iraq. Zealous in claiming the prize objects from each dig, she soon acquired the richest collection in the world of objects representing the early history of Iraq. In cloche hat and 1920s short skirt, she became a dreaded figure at British, American, and German excavations, walking briskly from her office car to the table of finds to claim or
bargain for the most precious objects. When discussions reached an impasse, she reverted to her favorite expedient: she tossed a coin.

In 1926, the year of her death, she turned her full attention to archaeology. Her object was to create a proper museum where her antiquities could be displayed. Her Babylonian Stone Room was opened by the king in June. As always, once she was committed to a project, she took on even the most uncongenial of tasks. Alone or with a clerk, sometimes with a Royal Air Force (RAF) officer who was a keen amateur, she laboriously cataloged the finds from Ur and Kish, sometimes getting up at 5 a.m. to do the work before the midday heat became overwhelming.

The descriptions and accounts below are taken from her letters home to her stepmother and father.

Athens, Spring 1899

Mr. Hogarth . . . showed us his recent finds—pots of 4000
B.C.
from Melos. Doesn't that make one's brain reel?

On a Lecture by Professor Dorpfield About the Acropolis

. . . He took us from stone to stone, and built up a wonderful chain of evidence with extraordinary ingenuity, until we saw the Athens of 600
B.C.
rise before us.

Pergamos, Turkey, March 1902

You should see me shopping in Smyrna—quite like a native, only I ought to have more flashing eyes. At Pergamos, I went all over the Acropolis and examined temples and palaces and theatres and the great altar of which the friezes are at Berlin.

Sardis, March 3, 1902

I've just succeeded in getting a second hand Herodotus
*
in French to my enormous delight. . . .

Sardis, March 7, 1902

I was delighted that I had Herodotus so fresh in my mind. . . . It's a madly interesting place. . . .

Sardis, March 9, 1902

Some day I shall come and travel here with tents, but then I will speak Turkish, which will not be difficult. . . .

Paris, November 7, 1904

After lunch I drove out, left some cards and went to see Salomon Reinach, whom I found enthusiastically delighted to see me. There were 2 other men there. . . . We sat for an hour or more while Salomon and Ricci piled books round me and poured information into my ears. It was delightful to hear the good jargon of the learned. . . . But bewildering. This morning I read till 11 about Byzantine MSS, which I'm going to see at the Bibliothéque Nationale; then I went shopping with the Stanleys and bought a charming little fur jacket to ride in in Syria—yes, I did! Then I came in and read till 2 when Salomon fetched me and we went together to the Louvre. We stayed till 4.30—it was enchanting. . . . There is nothing more wonderful than to go to a museum with my dear Salomon. We passed from Egypt through Pompeii and back to Alexandria. We traced the drawing of horns from Greece to Byzantium. We followed the lines of
Byzantine art into early Europe . . . while Salomon developed an entirely new theory about eyelids . . . and illustrated it with a Pheidean bust and a Scopas head. It
was
nice.

November 11, 1904

I've seen all the ivories that concern me, and I find to my joy that I am beginning to be able to place them. . . . This happy result is a good deal caused by having looked through such masses of picture books with Reinach. Last night he set me guessing what things were—even Greek beads—it was a sort of examination—I really think I passed. Reinach was much pleased but then he loves me so dearly that perhaps he is not a good judge. He has simply set all his boundless knowledge at my disposal. . . .

On Her 1905 Expedition Through the Syrian Desert to Asia Minor Qallat Semaan, March 31, 1905

I have had the most delightful day today, playing at being an archaeologist.

April 3, 1905

I shall not forget the misery of copying a Syrian inscription in the drenching rain, holding my cloak round my book to keep the paper dry. The devil take all Syrian inscriptions, they are so horribly difficult to copy.

Anavarza, April 21, 1905

I got up at dawn and at 6 o'clock started out to grapple with my churches. . . . I took my soldier with me and taught him to hold the measuring tape. He soon understood what I wanted and measured away at doors and windows like one to the manner
born. . . . One of the biggest of the churches is razed to the ground. . . . I looked round about for any scraps of carving that might give an indication of the style of decoration and found, after much search, one and one only—and it was dated! It was a big stone which from the shape and the mouldings I knew to have been at the spring of two arches of the windows of the apse, and the date was carved in beautiful raised Greek letters between the two arch mouldings—“The year 511.”

Two things I dislike in Anavarza. The mosquitoes and the snakes; the mosquitoes have been the most hostile of the two: the snakes always bustle away in a great hurry and I have made no experiments as to what their bite would be like. There are quantities of them among the ruins. They are about 3 ft long—I wonder if they are poisonous. . . . We dislodged the vultures who were sitting in rows on the castle top—they left a horrid smell behind them.

Karaman, May 7, 1905

I daresay it does not often occur to you to think what a wonderful invention is the railway, but it is very forcibly borne in upon me at this moment for I am going to Konia in 3 hours instead of having a weary two days' march across a plain of mud. Yesterday I rode in here some 35 miles.

Binbirkilise, May 13, 1905

We . . . set off across the plain to Binbirklisse. The name means
The Thousand and one Churches.
 . . . It lies at the foot of the Kara Dagh, a great isolated mountain arising abruptly out of the plain. . . . I fell in love with it at once, a mass of beautiful ruins gathered together in a little rocky cup high up in the hills—with Asia Minor at its feet. . . . It has made a delightful end to my travels. . . .

May 16, 1905

I . . . took the train and came back to Konia. The Consul and his wife met me at the station and dined with me at the hotel and I found there besides Professor Ramsay, who knows more about this country than any other man, and we fell into each other's arms and made great friends.

This was Gertrude's first meeting with the archaeologist Sir William Mitchell Ramsay, and it led to their collaboration on a book about the ruins of Binbirkilise. On this occasion, she showed him an inscription she had copied on her brief visit there. Professor Ramsay wrote in the preface to their book, “Miss Gertrude Bell was impelled by [Strzygowski's] book to visit Bin Bir Kilisse; and, when I met her at Konia on her return, she asked me to copy an inscription on one of the churches, in letters so worn that she could not decipher it, which she believed to contain a date for the building. Her belief proved well founded and the chronology of the Thousand and One Churches centres round this text.”

They met again at Binbirkilise at the end of May 1907 for a month of excavations, worked together on the results at Rounton, and published the book,
The Thousand and One Churches,
in 1909.

Lake of Egerdir, on the Journey to Binbirkilise, May 1, 1907

There was a place which Ramsay had begged me to try and visit on the eastern shore of the lake . . . a holy site long before the Christian era, sacred to Artemis of the Lake who was herself a Psidian deity re-baptised by the Greeks. . . . The rocks drop here straight into the lake and at their foot there is a great natural arch some 15 feet wide through which glistens the blue water of the lake. In the rock above is a small rock-cut chamber into which I scrambled with some difficulty and found a slab like a loculus in it . . . probably the slab was sacrificial. . . . So we rode back. . . . Almost joined to the shore by beds of immensely tall
reeds there is a little island which no one had yet succeeded in visiting. I, however, found . . . a very old and smelly boat, so I hired the three fishermen for an infinitesimal sum and rowed out to the island. . . . It was completely surrounded by ruined Byzantine walls dropping into the water in great blocks of masonry; here and there there was a bit of an older column built into them and they were densely populated by snakes. There was only one thing of real interest, a very curious stele with a female figure carved on it, bearing what looked like water skins, and two lines of inscription above . . . unfortunately the whole stone was covered by 18 inches or more of shimmering water. It had fallen into the lake and there it lay. I did all I knew to get the inscription. I waded into the water and tried to scrub the slime off the stone, but the water glittered and the slime floated back and finally I gave it up and came out very wet and more than a little annoyed.