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T. E. Lawrence to his family
Carchemish
May 16, 1911
Two very rough tracings of 'Museum'
drawings enclosed. Was hurried, and had not time to make better copies.
I am writing on our roof, about 7.30
in the evening: we knocked off work at 5, as usual, and gave the workmen
a dinner (of meat, and parched corn) before the house. Then came up
here. There have been no great incidents: today the sheikh of the
village, a black-bearded, rather quiet and picturesque young man, rode
up to a group of women, washing by the spring, on his horse, and picked
up one young girl, his first cousin, whom her parents had refused to
him. He set her before him on his horse, and galloped out of the
village, offering to shoot anyone who stood in his way. All the men were
digging with us, so escape was easy. Thompson brought the news down to
our digs, and there was great excitement: the relations of the girl
caught horses at once, and rode off to try and find the sheikh. They
have not come back, but matters will probably be settled by money
payment. Then Sunday we had a double marriage between the two villages
of Jerablus, upper and lower: the whole people turned out, the men
afoot, or on horse in such as had them, the women perched in three or
fours on the humps of Camels: everybody in the most brilliant colours,
new or clean, with the sunlight soothing down all too violent contrasts.
The two bodies met in the middle of the cornfields, after about a mile:
then there was a violent dispute over the precedence, to see which bride
should advance first: finally one came out (not ours) on her horse, and
was at once ridden down and captured by the horsemen of our village: and
then ours was taken similarly, with a mighty firing of guns and pistols,
and the hu-hu-hu violent tahleel of the women. The grooms sit at home,
in their houses, waiting for the women to come to them, and come they
did in a great triumphal procession, everyone galloping or singing or
shooting: the dowry carried before them on an ass in a great painted
chest: and till late at night there was dancing to the music of
hand-clapping, and shots being fired, and chanting to the pipes of such
as were goat-herds or shepherds. We sent a present to the man who was
our workman, and all our salaams. On Saturday an old Mullah came to the
trenches in the afternoon, beating a parchment drum, with a little boy
to carry a head-veil on a stick as a banner before him. The men all
threw down their tools and baskets, to lie on their faces in his way.
Then he walked on their backs, muttering various phrases. They said that
their sinews would be made strong at his touch. Later he married the
couple from Lower Jerablus. The weather tonight is curious: all day
there have been heavy clouds and occasional gusts of wind, with once a
dash of rain: now there is a smell of thunder in the air, and a grey
mist is creeping up the river valley towards us: we have a very lovely
view from our roof, across the flat plain that was the battle-ground of
Carchemish to a huge 'tell' over the river, and others at long intervals
to Tell Ahmar a day's journey off. This last mound Mr. Hogarth is going
to try to dig - or get permission to dig -. Further down are sharp
limestone hills, 'one like the blade of a knife' said Shalmaneser, with
Kala'at en Nedjur, a great Arab castle of the xiii Century, on one of
the first peaks. The Euphrates turns a great bend, six or seven miles
down, so we have a wide stretch of water, two or three miles of it, to
look at, with the little mound that was the outpost of Carchemish to the
South, thrown up against it. Just below we have a poplar grove, and over
it is a wild crowd of bee-eaters, sweeping about in the wind and the
dust clouds, with their shrill cries. The little village spring is led
into this grove, (and causes it): if the village was a little older (it
in only 4 years since its foundations) we would have plums and apricots
and other fruits, for quite a large orchard is planted down below. There
is bush grass all the year round: and there will be mosquitoes, or there
are, since we heard one tonight for the first time.
We are now beginning to clear up our
small objects, with a view to closing the digs in three weeks. The
Museum has asked that everything be photographed, to spare the expense
of sending a man to Constantinople later on. So I am glueing up pottery
(we have no proper cements) and trying to fit pieces of terracotta, and
inscriptions. There are about 150 photographs to be taken, and mine is
the only real camera we have. Mr. Hogarth is sending me films from
Beyrout. I have some very fine pots, one in particular, pebble-polished,
which is unique (and a nuisance, in 147 pieces, and only about half of
it remaining). Thompson is not a photographer. Of large things (we have
not yet found any small Hittite) we have got a very interesting basalt
relief, about 5 feet high, semi-mythological, a doorway prophylactic
slab, of two lion-headed human figures with bull's legs: a scrap of this
is still missing, with the lower half of one of the lion-headed ones: we
hope to find it in a new trench we are opening out.
Then we have a small relief, again in
black basalt (which is much the best material we have, being sharp in
texture, and not friable in damp or heat, though brittle) of a lion,
winged, but with a most curious human head, with the horned cap and two
long plaits of hair that distinguish the Hittites of this place,
apparently growing out of the back of the lion-neck. I have seen
something like it somewhere: Thompson never has, so the motive of it is
not Assyrian at any rate. I hope to send a tracing of my sketch of it
before long.
Then from the top of the great mound,
at the end shown in a letter to you sent off a week ago, we found 18
feet deep, a sort of pedestal in basalt, that may have carried a statue
or a copper bowl. It was composed of a round base of stone, rising from
the backs of two very stylistic lions: curious work, but powerful. Near
it was a basalt votive altar, of a style rather common here, with four
lines of close-packed Hittite linear inscription on it. Of course we can
make nothing of it, though Thompson hopes that he has a clue or two in
the very large inscription in relief, with the heads and hands upon it;
that we found a month back. I hope you may have seen a print of this,
from the photograph of mine that Mr. Hogarth took back to Oxford with
him.
I am borrowing money of Thompson, to
buy things in Aleppo with, and for my trip to Urfa: the money I have was
hardly enough, and one cannot send Cook's cheques by post. So can you
send him £4 to 13 Cheyne Gardens Chelsea S.W. (R. Campbell Thompson) in
an envelope to await his arrival (in mid or early July)? His father
lives there. Thompson is a fortunate man: he is getting his expenses,
and a pound a day, so he will clear £150 this season. I hope we have a
second! but it is highly doubtful. Tell Ahmar cannot be till the season
after next.
The country out here is very quiet:
there have been no religious troubles, or suspicions of them for a year
and a half: and Ibrahim Pasha the Kurd chief of Kiranshehir, was
poisoned a 9 months back by the Vali of Aleppo: so there is complete
peace. We finish here perhaps in 3 weeks or so, and will then go down to
Tell Ahmar for a week: to look for pieces of a big inscription there,
and to squeeze others: also there is a piece of cuneiform for Thompson.
After that I must look at Kala'at en Nedjur, for nobody has dated it
yet, or planned it, and from there I hope to go over the Mesopotamia
plain to Harran, and back to Biredjik and Tell Bashar by way of Urfa.
Please go on writing therefore to Aleppo (Consul) till early July, and
probably longer, if as I fancy I explore principally this north part of
the Latin Kingdom this year. I expect to reach Jebail in late September,
and will probably be passing through Aleppo in August.
Euphrates is still high: and there is
a plague of locusts: all the grass of the mound is full of them. We have
got our Imperial Commissaire dismissed, for a general nuisance: so are
happy, and great in the repute of all the country-side.
Salaams.
N.
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