In 1927, a recently divorced Agatha Christie decided to put her family, her problems and her land in the middle and traveled to Baghdad. She, above all, was tempted by the idea of embarking on a long journey on the Orient Express, since the trip on the mythical train was a true adventure.
However, in her autobiography she confesses that this was not the only reason for her interest in visiting the Orient: “I had just read in The Illustrated London News the wonderful discoveries of Leonard Woolley in Ur. I had always felt very attracted to archaeology, although she was completely profane on the subject.” Moved by curiosity, Agatha Christie entered a world that was going to completely change her life.
Christie arrived in Damascus and, after crossing the desert, visited the excavations of Ur, where a team of archaeologists led by Woolley was making one of the great archaeological discoveries of the last century.
With the support of the British Museum, Woolley had arrived in Ur in 1922. Seventy years earlier, another British officer, Henry Creswicke Rawlinson, had discovered inscriptions there that revealed evidence of human occupation 5,000 years BC. It was the biblical city that is mentioned in ancient scriptures as the birthplace of the patriarch Abraham. This finding confirmed that the Sumerians were the first urbanized and written people of which there is news.
A patient and meticulous man, Woolley discovered his royal burial ground, which contained great riches in the form of multiple silver and copper vessels, as well as hammered gold helmets and headdresses of gold, coral, and lapis lazuli. But what really shocked the specialists was the discovery of evidence that evidenced mass suicides as an accompaniment to royal burials. Woolley discovered more than seventy bodies, along with gold and silver harps and lyres that had been used for funeral songs.
Agatha Christie was received with honors, as Leonard's wife, Katherine Woolley, was a keen reader of hers. After getting to know the details of the excavation work up close, the author succumbed to the spell of archaeology: “I fell in love with Ur... The charm of the past took over me. It was romantic to see how a dagger with golden reflections appeared slowly among the sand. The care with which the vessels and other objects were lifted from the ground encouraged me to be an archaeologist.”
But it was not until the following year, 1928, that Christie was forever linked to archaeology. Back in Ur, at the invitation of the Woolleys, Agatha met her assistant Max Mallowan, who soon after became her second husband. It was a miraculously creative union between an intellectual, ambitious and passionate about archaeology, and a successful writer with an insatiable curiosity and a great willingness to understand other cultures beyond her own. Together they carried out their own archaeological projects.
The first of these was the location of Arpachiyah (Iraq), in a burial mound near the city of Nineveh, in which Mallowan proposed to excavate in search of prehistoric remains. In those years, excavations containing remains from before the invention of writing had become fashionable, and the archaeologist chose to enter this field. "For Max," says Christie, "the palaces did not offer any special interest: what really attracted him was studying the prehistoric period, because hardly anything was known about it."
Mallowan began the arduous business of digging into virgin ground with the unconditional support of the writer. She is she negotiated with suppliers and local contractors, and she did not hesitate to finance the expenses of the expedition when the first economic problems occurred.
Totally involved in the project, she shared her husband's concern at the disappointing initial results: “Those were very difficult times for us. Nothing had turned up yet to let us know whether or not Max would pay off her adventure... What we did find everywhere were some really nice pottery shards and some black obsidian knives, the blades delicately laced; but, in general, nothing extraordinary”.
After several months of work, a fabulous discovery was made: a burnt pottery. Christie describes it this way: “The pottery was complete under the ground. It had been left to burn and this had preserved it. There were plates, glasses, goblets and dishes made of polychrome ceramic [...]. Vessel after vessel appeared, almost all of which could be reconstructed. Some were somewhat charred, having remained untouched for about six thousand years."
From then on the pace of work was overwhelming. Christie, who had already become a regular assistant to her husband, tirelessly cleaned and repaired ceramic fragments: “I remember cleaning a lot; Like any professional, I had my favorite tools: an orange stick or a very fine point needle... It was exciting; a lot of patience was needed, a lot of care, delicacy in the treatment”.
Christie received scale drawing classes to help catalog the finds: “I learned to measure, calculate and draw things at two-thirds their actual size or how they should be”.
The outbreak of the Second World War interrupted the archaeological activity of the couple, who returned to Europe and could not return to the Orient until 1947. Then, Max Mallowan, who had lost interest in prehistoric ceramics, saw another of his dreams come true: excavate in Nimrud (Iraq), military capital of the Assyrians.
For a decade the couple lived dedicated to that work. Max spent the day at the dig, while Agatha restored or cleaned the ivory figures that turned up. In addition, she had learned photography during her stay in Europe, so she took snapshots of all the objects found.
Through his work from that period, Mallowan brought to light the palaces of the acropolis, with their splendid ivory bas-reliefs, and a multicolored woman's head, a face with a seductive smile framed by black braids.
Agatha Christie's husband excavated in the town a little over a hundred years after Austen Henry Layard tunneled its outskirts to extract reliefs and large sculptures. Layard dismissed the small treasures (ivory and crystal ornaments, bronze weapons...) on which the Mallowan excavation focused instead.
For ten seasons, he and his team unearthed private rooms in the palace of a king who had ruled in the eighth century BC. C. In them they found hundreds of carved ivory ornaments and plaques, while in the administrative areas they found brick boxes (archives) and cuneiform writing tablets. These discoveries shed light on the lives of the wealthiest citizens of the town.
Max Mallowan found inscribed slabs erected by Ashurbanipal II, King of Assyria, in 879 BC. C. to commemorate the completion of his new palace and the reconstruction of the city of Nimrud. The inscriptions explain the festivities in great detail.
Before finally leaving the East, Christie and her husband traveled to Egypt on several occasions (which inspired some of the author's most celebrated creations) and visited the archaeological site of Tell Brak (Syria).
This text is part of an article published in number 420 of the Historia y Vida magazine. Do you have something to contribute? Write to us at redaccionhyv@historiayvida.com.
