Treasure Seekers: Edge of the Orient Page #4

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archeologists were unearthing

the priceless treasures

of humanity's

earliest civilizations.

Staking their claims to this booty

for their museums back home.

At the ruins of Babylon,

Gertrude marveled

as German archeologists brought

the imposing city back to life.

It is the most extraordinary place.

I have seldom felt the ancient world

come so close.

She stopped to visit English archeologists

at the ruins of Carchemish.

A dig strategically placed

near the construction of a new

German railroad through the desert.

One of the archeologists

was a promising young graduate

student named T.E. Lawrence.

In these uneasy years before wartime,

it wasn't surprising

to see the English doing double duty

digging and keeping watch over

the activities of the Germans nearby.

This complete separation between

archeology and politics

that we have today or at least

that we think exists today

was not true at that time.

Archeology and politics were

very closely interrelated.

Gentleman archeologist,

gentlewoman archeologist,

gentleman spy,

gentlewoman spy.

It was part of what in the 19th

century was called "The Great Game."

And there was this constant interplay

between archeology and intelligence

at a very informal level.

It is no coincidence

that a lot of archeologists became

intelligence officers in World War I,

because they had done it before

the war working at archeological sites.

Gertrude was intrigued

with archeology,

but she had other things on her mind.

In the spring of 1913,

at the age of 45,

she fell hopelessly in love

for the second time in her life.

His name was Richard Doughty Wiley,

and he was everything

she wanted in a man.

A soldier and a scholar

who was handsome and brave,

and radiated British pluck.

Unfortunately, he was also married.

She was completely intrigued

with this man,

and fell madly in love with him.

He was a bit of a callous man.

He was a man

who was a true womanizer,

and he even told her about

some of his other experiences,

which was kind of cruel,

I think.

But no matter, she was wildly

in love with him,

and he encouraged her and her work.

Secretly they met for a passionate

weekend at Gertrude's family home

in the English countryside.

Victorian to her core,

she resisted consummating their affair.

The situation seemed hopeless.

And then he was sent off

to the Balkans in 1913,

and it was a heartbreaking thing

for her,

but it also stimulated her desire

to show that she was as adventurous,

as intrepid, as indomitable

as Doughty Wiley.

So Gertrude Bell actually set off

on the journey of her life.

Her destination was Central Arabia,

the vast desert of the Nejd.

Gertrude embarked on

a private mission

to meet with two of the desert's

most powerful sheiks.

Men whose rivalries had kept the area

a no man's land for a generation.

Turkish and British authorities

forbade her to go.

But as usual,

Gertrude did things her way.

When Gertrude set off on her

big expeditions into the desert,

she would take with her

Wedgwood china, her crystal stemware,

the silver flatware,

her tweed jackets,

her linen clothes, her fur coats,

her fringed shawls,

her petticoats and her crinolines,

and she would use those to hide

her rifles and her guns

and her theadolite

and her compasses,

because she did not want the Turks to

know what she was doing in the desert.

With her imperious manner,

Gertrude had a way of

ensuring an audience

with even the most elusive sheiks.

She impressed them with her command

of Arabic and her passion for politics.

When she would present herself

to a sheik

or to a tribal leader

or to a dignitary,

the way that she spoke

and the way that she held herself

was of such import

that they saw her not as a woman,

but as a figure of authority.

And so her gender was forgotten about.

It was completely ignored.

In fact, they saw her as a person

with a capital P.

And that was something that

Gertrude Bell aspired to

to be seen as a person

wherever she went.

I think by paradox, in the Arab world,

she was so exotic,

both because she dressed

every bit the Victorian

Englishwoman, and because at the same

time she spoke Persian,

she spoke Arabic, she could

deal with them man to man,

and yet she looked

very much the woman

yet not one of theirs, but a foreign,

exotic, other woman

made her such a fascinating creature

that she gained entry,

paradoxically, into their world as a

man from Britain could not have done.

To Bell it was clear that

the power of the Ottoman Turks

was fading in the Middle East.

To be replaced, she believed,

by British influence.

Some Arab sheiks favored the British,

others the Turks.

On this trip in 1913, tensions

were too high even for Gertrude.

She headed home and wrote up her

impressions for the British government.

Just a few months later,

World War I broke out.

And the report that she had written

became vital to the British.

She was the person

who knew the balances of powers,

the shifting alliances.

She had contacts which were

truly awesome in the desert,

and the respect of the chieftains.

Gertrude's report reflected

her keen understanding

of the opportunity

in the Middle East.

The time had come, she wrote,

to organize the Arabs

in a revolt against the Turks.

In wartime,

the strategy was irresistible

as the Ottoman Turks had sided with

the Germans against the British.

The same British who had forbade her

to go into the desert,

turned around and drafted her as a spy

for the British in the Middle East.

Working closely beside Gertrude

in intelligence in the Cairo bureau

were several ex archeologists,

including T.E. Lawrence,

A.K.A. Lawrence of Arabia.

Gertrude Bell was actually the brains

behind T.E. Lawrence.

He had actually never been to Arabia.

It was Gertrude Bell

who had been there,

and so she was the one

who was able to tell Lawrence

which sheiks he should contact,

and who was reliable and who was not.

She was as essential or more so

than Lawrence, I think,

in convincing Arab leaders

to side with the British.

She had their trust in a way that

I think no Western man

could quite accomplish.

But, of course,

when it came time to

go off to the desert

and become the liaison with

the Arabs,

the British said,

Lawrence is going,

and when Gertrude Bell said,

I want to go,

they said, Don't be ridiculous;

it is much too dangerous for a woman.

Now, of course, she was the one

who had been there originally.

But the British being the British,

that was their attitude,

and they would not let her go.

Gertrude remained desk bound, feeding

information to Lawrence at the front.

She knew every important oasis

in the Arabian desert,

every Arab sheik who might be

persuaded to rise against the Turks.

Slowly, the tide of the war turned.

In January of 1917,

Lawrence led his famous charge

against Ottoman forces in Aqaba,

one of the finest moments

of the Arab revolt.

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