Introduction
You likely imagine archaeology as a glamorous pursuit of golden masks, pharaohian tombs, and priceless royal treasures unearthed from pristine desert sands. You picture lonely scholars deciphering grand historical mysteries in silent academic halls far removed from the petty annoyances of daily existence.
Agatha Christie shatters this romantic illusion in Come, Tell Me How You Live. The true essence of historical fieldwork lies not in glittering gold, but in the gritty, humorous, and enduring daily lives of ordinary people across centuries.
Archaeological expeditions in the Syrian desert reveal that the true essence of history lies not in royal treasures, but in the gritty, humorous, and enduring daily lives of ordinary people.
You discover that successful excavations depend as much on surviving melted soft cheeses and rodent invasions as on careful stratigraphy. The book guides you through the unglamorous realities of desert life alongside renowned archaeologist Max Mallowan. You learn how an expedition actually functions from the ground up.
The following chapters take you step by step through the entire archaeological cycle in the Middle East. You start by purchasing tropical equipment in London and choosing promising prehistoric mounds across the Syrian landscape. You experience the daily realities of managing diverse labor crews, navigating complex local customs, and resolving domestic logistics in remote camps. Finally, you witness the tension of official artifact divisions and the looming shadow of approaching European war.
You will find answers to several practical questions about desert fieldwork:
- How do you outfit yourself for months of isolation in tropical climates?
- What daily challenges arise when setting up camp in remote regions?
- How do you manage and motivate local excavation crews effectively?
- What cultural nuances shape interactions with indigenous communities?
- How do archaeologists actually divide their discoveries with state authorities?
1. Preparing for the Tropical Expedition
Equipping yourself for an archaeological dig requires abandoning stylish wardrobes for practical tropical attire and accepting that personal items like watches and fountain pens will fail under desert conditions.
Purchasing clothing for desert travel presents difficult compromises between practicality, comfort, and unflattering outfits. You must abandon stylish wardrobes in favor of sturdy items from the Tropical Department.
Shopping for the Expedition
You will visit the Cruising Department to acquire items suitable for harsh climates. Your transformation involves purchasing an unglamorous shantung suit and a specially ordered felt hat.
You must select headwear designed to withstand strong winds:
- a standard topee;
- a double terai hat.
Packing Books and Spares
Archaeologists prioritize transporting massive quantities of books over personal comfort or clothing. When packing luggage for a long-term dig, you fill suitcases to the absolute brim with heavy academic tomes. You must force them shut by sheer physical effort.
Max Mallowan fills his suitcases almost entirely with books. He eventually crams two immense volumes into his wife's luggage.
Standard personal items fail rapidly under desert environments. Expedition members must carry multiple backup items because desert conditions cause fountain pens to leak or fail completely. Wristwatches stop or run erratically under heavy use.
You purchase four wristwatches for yourself. You also buy cheap watches specifically to hand out to Arab foremen who inevitably break them.
Journey on the Orient Express
Travel to archaeological sites in the Middle East during the 1930s begins with a famous rail journey. You take a Pullman train to Dover, cross the channel, and board the Simplon Orient Express across Europe.
The route from London takes you through continental Europe to Istanbul. You experience the familiar sights of crossing the Swiss mountains and stopping at Venice and Trieste.
Crossing international borders during 1930s train travel involves meticulous bureaucratic checks. Customs officials and railway conductors inspect luggage and demand exact compliance regarding declared cash funds and personal items.
Turkish customs officials inspect a large collection of shoes and question bug powder. They laugh after understanding its purpose and confirm that your documents are en règle.
2. Surveying the Historical Landscape
Fieldwork in northern Syria begins with a preliminary survey of ancient city mounds to select the most promising sites for full-scale excavation. Archaeological seasons in the field start by examining numerous tells along river banks to determine which locations yield the most valuable historical insights for Mesopotamia.
Fieldwork begins by examining ancient city mounds across the Syrian landscape to target specific early civilizations like the Mitanni rather than later Roman settlements.
Max Mallowan's later selection of Chagar Bazar and Tell Brak stems from these initial survey trips across the region. You discover that new acquaintances can unexpectedly trigger acute shyness even in individuals who have achieved social poise. Despite having attained middle-aged confidence, you might find yourself reduced to nervous idiocy by the coldly superior manner and raised eyebrows of the young architect Mac. When you invite Mac out for tea and suggest exploring the town, Mac raises his eyebrows and coldly replies 'Is it?', completely deflating your savoir faire.
The Purpose of the Survey
Geographical passes serve as historical palimpsests where successive conquering empires leave carved records of their presence. The rock surfaces near the Nahr el Kelb display centuries of military boasts and victory commemorations left by various historical forces.
Carved inscriptions at the Dog River span across many centuries:
- Egyptian hieroglyphics of Rameses II;
- Assyrian and Babylonian records;
- an inscription left by Sennacherib in 701 B.C.;
- Alexander's passage;
- Allenby's army names and initials written in 1917.
Historical Layers at Nahr el Kelb
The expedition treats Roman remains with contempt as too modern, focusing instead on the second millennium B.C., including the Hittites and the military dynasty of Mitanni. When reaching Busaira, Roman ruins are dismissed with Hamoudi's phrase 'Min Ziman er Rum' because the team seeks older prehistoric and Mitanni sites like Washshukkanni.
3. Selecting Chagar Bazar
Choosing an excavation site balances labor availability, water supplies, and promising prehistoric pottery while navigating formal administrative contracts with local landowners.
All digging involves a high degree of luck because smaller tells can sometimes yield better results than looted major towns. You must evaluate nearly seventy tells in the region, narrowing down choices through strict criteria.
Mound Survey Criteria
The expedition specifically looks for three practical conditions:
- proximity to villages for labor;
- a nearby water source like a river or usable well;
- trial indications of the correct historical period.
Max, Hamoudi, and Mac evaluate nearly seventy tells in the region, ultimately narrowing down their choices to Tell Brak and Chagar Bazar.
Chagar Bazar Selection
Chagar Bazar is chosen as the primary excavation site due to its promising prehistoric pottery and favourable local conditions. The site shows evidence of occupation dating back to the fifteenth century B.C., along with early Arpachiyah Tell Halaf type painted pottery. It benefits from nearby villages, water access, and a local sheikh willing to negotiate terms.
The local Sheikh at Chagar Bazar greets the team and offers his land, while secretly hoping for significant financial compensation or prestige from the construction of a house. Landowners expect substantial payments or gifts modeled on historical legends of extravagant gold payouts, such as one thousand pounds desired in gold. Agreements are ultimately formalized through official written contracts mediated by military authorities. The Sheikh of Chagar Bazar negotiates with Max and a French military officer of the Services Spéciaux, agreeing to crop compensation and land lease terms.
Car Travel through Wadis
Traveling across the fertile steppe during seasonal rains turns dirt tracks and wadis into treacherous driving conditions. Heavy autumn rains quickly fill wadis and create deep mud that paralyzes traffic, causing cars to skid continuously or get stuck at steep angles requiring boards and tow-ropes.
The team struggles to cross flooded wadis between Hasetshe and Kamichlie, where cars like Mary and the taxi get bogged down in thick mud before being extracted with much shouting and effort. It takes a quarter of an hour to extricate the car from a wadi.
4. Setting Up Camp and Managing Crews
Establishing functional expedition quarters involves overcoming severe vermin infestations and organizing local workmen into structured gangs driven by financial bonuses.
House Infestation
Archaeological field quarters in remote regions often require extreme measures to become habitable due to severe infestations of vermin. When you arrive at your rented house in Amuda, you find it occupied by multiple Armenian families and overrun by hundreds of mice, cockroaches, and spiders. You must sleep outdoors and eventually employ a hyper-professional cat to restore order.
A professional cat was loaned to the team; it methodically ambushed and killed mice without ever demanding food or attention, completely clearing the house within five days.
Workforce Organization and Bakshish
Excavation labor is organized into structured gangs with financial incentives tied directly to discovery rather than just labor time. Workers are grouped into pickmen, spademen, and basket-boys, supplemented by bakshish. This practice appeals directly to the workmen's natural gambling instincts by offering a small cash bonus paid for every minor object found.
Little Abdul Jehar found a rare intact cylinder seal and was awarded five francs, sparking great excitement among the crew.
Michel had to be repeatedly dispatched to the bazaars to exchange official bank currency for heavy, garlic-smelling, dirty mejidi coins used to pay the workmen. While the official currency of the country was the French franc, conservative local inhabitants and bazaars insisted on being paid exclusively in the old Turkish mejidi.
Cultural Views on Illness
Traditional communities in the Middle East often view Western medical interventions in hospitals as deeply shameful compared to accepting death. When workers fell ill, they and their peers strongly resisted going to the hospital because certain medical procedures like enemas were considered an unbearable loss of dignity.
Jerablus workmen shook their heads doubtfully at hospitalization, citing a case where a man survived an enema in a hospital but returned home nursing a deep, lifelong grievance because death would have been preferable to the indignity.
Maintaining a local reputation often requires adhering strictly to community norms surrounding death and burial rather than Western pragmatism. When an expedition worker died in the hospital far from home, the local foreman insisted that the body must be disinterred and shipped back to Jerablus to prevent a severe reflection on the expedition's honor. Max navigated a labyrinth of French official forms and stamps, using a formalin spray and a singing taxi-driver, to legally disinter, disinfect, and return the body of Abdullah Hamid to his home town for a proper feast.
5. Navigating Local Beliefs and Customs
Remote fieldwork requires understanding diverse cultural taboos and religious worldviews, from Yezidi beliefs regarding Shaitan to bureaucratic nightmares over trivial parcels.
Bureaucratic Absurdity
Official red tape can turn trivial personal mail into an international bureaucratic nightmare. You find that basic items become trapped between different government offices whose schedules never match.
B.’s parcel of special mosquito-proof pyjamas from London causes weeks of arguments and huge custom fees before being finally delivered by a douanier. The customs office demands an exorbitant sum of eight pounds for the pyjamas. You resolve the issue after the involvement of local authorities, bank managers, and church dignitaries, paying a thirty shillings actual duty and a douze francs cinquante stamp fee.
Yezidi Beliefs and Shaitan
Religious groups often maintain strict taboos and worldviews that deeply affect daily interactions and fieldwork on excavations. The Yezidis practice propitiation towards Shaitan, whom they believe God placed in charge of the world until the age of Jesus arrives. You must remember that they strictly avoid mentioning his name or anything contaminated by lettuce.
A Yezidi workman refuses to drink well water because the Sheikh's son allegedly dropped lettuce into it. Max explains that the rumor was a trick, resolving the crisis.
The Sheikh 'Adi Sanctuary
Remote religious sanctuaries provide rare moments of profound peace and cultural insight untouched by the surrounding turmoil. Sacred sites belonging to minority groups offer architectural and natural beauty steeped in ancient symbology and local mythologies.
Christie visits the Yezidi holy shrine of Sheikh 'Adi in the Kurdish hills, noting its peaceful courtyards, running water, and the sacred black serpent carved near the temple.
6. Domestic Logistics and Camp Life
Camp administration brings unexpected domestic challenges, including melted soft cheeses, eccentric servant behavior, and local women seeking informal medical advice.
The Camembert Disaster
Storing ripe soft cheeses in warm conditions without refrigeration leads to catastrophic decomposition and extreme odors. You can ruin provisions quickly if you lack proper cooling methods.
Max bought 6 Camembert cheeses in Aleppo expecting to store them like Dutch cheese. The Colonel stacked 5 cheeses neatly at the back of a living-room cupboard where they were forgotten and melted into an extremely pungent, gluey mass that became coulant to the n th degree.
After a fortnight, the household suffered from an overpowering smell they initially blamed on a dead mouse or rat. A thorough search uncovered the liquefied Camembert cheeses, which Mansur had to bury ceremoniously.
Native Servant Confusion
Mansur agonizes over laying the table for lunch. He tries the tablecloth in different directions and places forks on cups and saucers. Meanwhile, Ferhid worries constantly and Dimitri prepares elaborate multi-course meals.
Informal Medical Advice
Expedition members are frequently treated as medical practitioners by local women seeking remedies for various ailments. You might find yourself diagnosing obscure complaints with very limited supplies.
The Sheikh brings his 5 veiled wives to consult the Khatún. The principal wife receives a diagnosis of blood poisoning and aspirin for pain relief.
During this visit, 18 people stand outside to observe the consultation while 5 women enter the storehouse. Local women frequently ask for help with eye infections, headaches, and fertility.
7. Excavation Stratigraphy and Artifacts
Deep-cut stratigraphy reveals successive layers of ancient occupation while unearthing trade counters, domestic items, and clever local forgeries.
Servant Hierarchy
Seniority among local staff dictates rank rather than actual competence, creating frustrating administrative challenges for archaeological expeditions. You must navigate a domestic structure where rank outweighs skill.
The author contrasts Subri, who is intelligent and adaptable, with Mansur, the senior head boy who is slow, unhygienic, and inefficient. Because of seniority, Mansur attends directly to the directors while the assistants get the better servant.
Mansur makes coffee or tea poorly, drops water, shuffles around noisily, and messes up bed-making with idiosyncratic methods. Preparing European dishes in field kitchens requires adapting to local methods, ingredients, and extreme heat while avoiding dishes that cannot wait.
A kitchen temperature reaches 99 degrees F. Dishes requiring precise timing, like soufflés or omelettes, fail because local staff prepare them an hour early and put them in the oven.
Excavation Stratigraphy
Deep-cut excavations through tells reveal multiple distinct layers of historical and prehistoric occupation. You uncover civilizations that flourished millennia ago.
At Chagar Bazar, a deep cut from the top to virgin soil revealed fifteen layers of successive occupations, ten of which are prehistoric, dating back to when the mound was abandoned around 1500 B.C. due to denudation. Workers frequently unearth intrusive Roman and Islamic graves, joking that the excavators are digging up each other's grandfathers.
Artifacts and design motifs found at excavation sites prove ancient connections to broader regional and international trade networks. Chagar Bazar was once part of a major trading center network connecting Harran, Tell Halaf, Jebel Sinjar, and Nineveh.
A metal counter minted in Nuremberg around A.D. 1600 found in an Islamic grave demonstrated contact between the obscure region and Europe across a timeframe illustrating ancient caravan routes used 3000 to 5000 years ago.
Antiquity Forgery Detection
Clever local forgers sometimes attempt to manufacture fake artifacts to capitalize on the expedition's bounty system. You must remain vigilant against manufactured history.
When suspiciously well-crafted items like carved animal amulets, a small blackened bear, a lion's head, and a primitive human figure turn up in specific corners of the dig, Max identifies them as forgeries. These items originate from a village located ten kilometres from the dig.
Max holds a public denunciation and destroys the fake objects on pay-day, sacking the guilty workers while secretly admiring the forgers' craftsmanship.
8. The Division of Finds and Fatal Incidents
The archaeological season reaches critical turning points through the official division of finds with state representatives and tragic accidents caused by worker disobedience.
The Syrian Division System
The system for dividing archaeological finds in Syria requires you to arrange everything into two equal halves. Unlike Iraq where division is done object by object over several days, the Syrian process makes the director shoulder the whole burden.
M. Dunand arrives late to Chagar Bazar due to a wrong turn at Brak, examines the two displays, and makes his selection after an hour of reflection.
The representative of the Services des Antiquités takes his preferred half for the local museum. Unique items on the Syrian side are often loaned to London for study.
Eastern Servants and Jinns
Local eastern servants often appear magically when needed without prior notice. They resemble mythical Jinns in their ability to anticipate the arrival of the excavators.
Dimitri arrives from the coast long before the dig starts to help support the large families of his two brothers, stating that God is good and they will not starve.
- One brother supports eight children.
- The other brother supports ten children.
Fatal Cave-in at Tell Brak
Greed and disobedience over valuable archaeological finds can lead to fatal accidents. Workmen disregard safety protocols by undercutting ancient pits to reach rich layers faster.
Four workmen are killed at Tell Brak when a section of the mound collapses on them after they secretly undercut the pit during lunch break to steal carved stone amulets.
Three pickmen rushed to dig their comrades out, but the disaster highlights how the pursuit of bakshish and theft from rival gangs can turn deadly.
9. Relocating to Ain el Arus
Moving the expedition to the Balikh region brings damp quarters, complex staff negotiations, and the looming shadow of approaching European war.
House Moving
You leave Brak to set up a house in Tell Abyadh near an azure-blue spring that is the traditional meeting-place of Isaac and Rebecca. The building sits below street level and suffers from severe dampness that causes physical stiffness, though it features a sophisticated garden.
Upon the lorry's arrival from the move, you discover you have lost three chairs, a table, and Christie's lavatory seat. Doors and windows do not shut properly, allowing local dogs to constantly breach the house to court Hiyou.
- Hiyou demonstrates canine snobbery by favoring a snub-nosed black dog wearing a collar.
- The animal creates pandemonium by leaping through windows and running through bedrooms.
- Staff members frantically hurl pans and objects to clear the rooms.
Subri Dental Bargaining
Expedition staff members engage in rigorous financial negotiations even when seeking medical treatment. Subri travels to Aleppo for a severe toothache and haggards extensively over the price of an extraction.
When the initial dentist quote of twenty francs drops to eighteen francs, Subri agrees to the fee with a specific condition. He instructs the professional to extract four teeth instead of just one ailing tooth to prevent future pain for the same price.
A dignified local woman dressed in black with an enormous gold cross lodges a formal complaint with Max. She accuses Subri of bursting into her house, violently throwing out a Turkish patron, and helping a girl run away with one hundred and ten francs of borrowed money. Max negotiates a settlement where expedition funds repay the missing money to uphold their honor, subsequently deducting the sum from Subri's wages.
End of Season Uncertainty
As December arrives, you wrap up work and visit friends at Ras Shamra. You prepare to leave by boat through Beirut with a heavy feeling that you may not be able to return to Syria.
While boarding a boat in Beirut, your romantic farewell to the region is comically shattered by an unexpected harbor incident. A passing cargo boat drops a crate into the sea, dotting the surface with floating lavatory seats.
10 Key Ideas
- Archaeological expeditions in the Syrian desert reveal that the true essence of history lies not in royal treasures, but in the gritty, humorous, and enduring daily lives of ordinary people.
- Equipping yourself for an archaeological dig requires abandoning stylish wardrobes for practical tropical attire and accepting that personal items like watches and fountain pens will fail under desert conditions.
- Fieldwork begins by examining ancient city mounds across the Syrian landscape to target specific early civilizations like the Mitanni rather than later Roman settlements.
- Choosing an excavation site balances labor availability, water supplies, and promising prehistoric pottery while navigating formal administrative contracts with local landowners.
- Establishing functional expedition quarters involves overcoming severe vermin infestations and organizing local workmen into structured gangs driven by financial bonuses.
- Remote fieldwork requires understanding diverse cultural taboos and religious worldviews, from Yezidi beliefs regarding Shaitan to bureaucratic nightmares over trivial parcels.
- Camp administration brings unexpected domestic challenges, including melted soft cheeses, eccentric servant behavior, and local women seeking informal medical advice.
- Deep-cut stratigraphy reveals successive layers of ancient occupation while unearthing trade counters, domestic items, and clever local forgeries.
- The archaeological season reaches critical turning points through the official division of finds with state representatives and tragic accidents caused by worker disobedience.
- Moving the expedition to the Balikh region brings damp quarters, complex staff negotiations, and the looming shadow of approaching European war.