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  When Bell met Reinach in 1904,49 he was the director of the archaeological museum at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, near Paris, a post he would keep until his death in 1932 (he started in 1902). He was also lecturing on Renaissance painting as an art history professor at the École du Louvre and editing the prestigious journal Revue archéologique. It seems that Bell had learned about this renowned European scholar through her friend Eugénie Strong, a Classical archaeologist by training,50 and she had probably travelled to Paris to see him at Strong’s recommendation. Strong herself had made Reinach’s acquaintance a decade or so earlier, and attributed her appreciation of the art and archaeology of the western Roman provinces to Reinach’s expertise on Celtic and Gallo-Roman archaeology.51

  As related in her letters and diaries, Bell’s visits to see Reinach were exciting and productive. She described intensive days under his guidance, poring over books of engravings, inscriptions and photographs of ancient sculpture and architecture that he brought to her from the shelves of his comprehensive library. She also visited museums with him around Paris, including his own in St Germain, and she was able to see and sometimes handle antiquities – for example, ancient ivories and illuminated manuscripts.52 Reinach endeavoured to introduce Bell to other notable scholars whose interests in the Near East matched her own, among them Melchior de Vogüé (1829–1916), a French archaeologist distinguished for his investigations and scholarly reports on ancient Cyprus, Syria and Palestine in the 1860s,53 and René Dussaud (1868–1958), a renowned French Orientalist, archaeologist and expert on ancient religions, who had travelled extensively in Syria and published widely acclaimed accounts of Syrian history, peoples and ancient sites.54 Overall, Bell liked Reinach tremendously and was impressed with his dedication to his studies and his vast capacity for work.55 For his part, Reinach found Bell ‘quite charming’ and extended to her warm hospitality whenever she visited him.56 He was also generous with his time and wide learning.

  Reinach must have been impressed with Bell’s scholarly abilities, too, for he asked her to write a review article for Revue archéologique.57 Although anxious about producing an article for such a prestigious academic publication, Bell excitedly accepted this assignment, which entailed reviewing a lengthy work on the artistic and architectural program of the desert palace of Mshatta, a ruined castle in the Jordanian desert south of Amman. The author was the famous Austrian scholar Joseph Strzygowski.58 The topic was appropriate for Bell: she was already acquainted with Strzygowski’s scholarship and could capably read German. Moreover, she had passed by Mshatta during her travels through Jordan in 1900 and was familiar with the controversy over its date and the identity of its builder. As it transpired, Bell’s short review article, which appeared in Reinach’s journal in 1905,59 was to be the first of several that he commissioned, the others being Bell’s reports on the ruined churches she visited in the course of her 1905 journey through Cilicia and Lycaonia in Anatolia, and a review of a German report on the site of Binbirkilise.60 These reports gave Bell exposure to the wider world of archaeological scholarship for the first time, and they did not go unnoticed. Strzygowski himself produced a favourable review of Bell’s accounts of the Anatolian churches, writing:

  I do not know Gertrude L.B. personally, I do not know if she is young or old, therefore my judgement is totally impartial: what she accomplished should set an example for men […] she has presented Christian art of Asia Minor in a way that hopefully the whole world will soon go there to see with their own eyes that Asia Minor is a very fruitful ‘Neuland’ for art history.61

  Altogether, the positive encouragement, intensive instruction and introduction to European scholarship that Salomon Reinach provided for Bell contributed significantly to her development as an archaeologist. Her new-found knowledge and confidence boosted her desire to study the ancient world, and her travels to the Near East found additional fulfilment through the scholarly manner in which she now analysed the archaeological sites she visited.

  As reported, the final leg of Bell’s 1905 Near Eastern journey, in April and May, entailed a visit to the regions of Cilicia and Lacaonia in Anatolia (present-day southern Turkey), where she proceeded to make the careful and comprehensive report of Byzantine churches that would appear as a series of installments in Revue archéologique.62 By far the most fascinating churches were located at Binbirkilise, a remarkable cluster of ruins on the slopes of the volcanic mountain Karadağ, to the south-east of the city of Konya on the central Anatolian plateau. Because of their remoteness, these churches and the numerous structures around them had not been disturbed by later construction, and despite their ruinous state, Bell could often discern some of their original plans and functions. She spent time measuring and photographing the ruins and copying some of the few inscriptions found among them. Fortuitously while in Konya, Bell had a chance encounter with the Classical archaeologist and leading ‘authority on the topography, antiquities and history of Asia Minor’, William Ramsay, to whom she enthusiastically reported the archaeological wealth of Binbirkilise.63 They agreed that the site deserved further scrutiny, and so they decided to collaborate on an archaeological expedition to further explore its remains.

  Largely financed by Bell’s personal funds, the archaeological project to Binbirkilise proceeded in May and June 1907 (Fig. 1.5). The expedition’s aim was to acquire a comprehensive record of the site’s remains, particularly the churches, and while it did not entail full-scale excavations, a small team of local Kurds and Turks were employed to clear the earth and rubble around the bases of the buildings’ walls in order to expose their full dimensions and forms.64 Bell subsequently travelled to neighbouring areas of Anatolia after the investigations at Binbirkilise, finding and reporting on contemporary examples of ecclesiastical architecture that helped situate the site in its proper architectural and chronological context (she explored further the region of the Karadağ, and then the Hasan Dağ and Karadja Dağ ranges in July 1907). The result of Bell’s and Ramsay’s intensive research was a co-authored monograph entitled The Thousand and One Churches (a translation of the site’s Turkish name, Binbirkilise). Published in 1909, the work well reflects the respective expertise of its authors, Ramsay tackling the dating and development of the buildings on the basis of extant historical records and his study of the inscriptions found at the site, while Bell’s contribution consisted of a detailed description of each church, accompanied by carefully measured plans and photographs.65 She also devised a chronology of buildings on the basis of changes observed in their architecture, masonry and decorations.66 Together, the authors produced an architectural classification of churches that tracked their development between the fifth and eleventh centuries, and they linked the buildings’ abandonments, shifts in settlement location, rebuildings or renovations to historical developments such as the Arab Muslim invasions and the later arrival of the Seljuk Turks.67

  Fig. 1.5 Gertrude Bell and her servant, Fattuh, standing in front of her tent at Ramsay and Bell’s camp at Binbirkilise (south central Turkey), in 1907.

  Bell’s investigations at Binbirkilise marked her first intensive foray into archaeological work in the Near East, and in this effort we can begin to discern the particular direction of her archaeological interests and her favoured methodology, these largely persisting in all of her subsequent investigations. Without question, a strong influence by 1907 was Josef Strzygowski (about whom more will be said in the following chapter), and we see his signature approach in much of Bell’s work in The Thousand and One Churches. Her work on the development and character of Binbirkilise’s churches, marked by careful attention to their architectural forms and ornamentation, and her attempts to establish cultural contacts and influences on the basis of these observable physical characteristics, closely followed Strzygowski’s own comparative formal analysis. Bell’s study of the vaults, arches, domes and architectural mouldings of the Anatolian churches, and her consequent determination of the date and cultural character of the buildings in which t
hey appeared, especially exhibited this type of approach. Moreover, her growing expertise in this methodology and her familiarity with such features – their distinctive forms, dimensions, masonry and technology – guided subsequent investigations. Her later treatment of the vaults and domes of the palace and mosque at Ukhaidir (to be considered further in Chapter 3), for example, constituted a critical aspect of her study of this complex, assisting greatly with its dating and identification.

  While Bell followed Strzygowski’s overall approach to ancient art and architecture, his overly simplistic notions about the primacy of the East to explain the origins of all architectural forms did not match her more nuanced observations of local creative ingenuity and innovation in the architecture of Asia Minor, as Mark Jackson has adroitly observed of Bell’s study of the churches of Binbirkilise.68 But she expressed her diverging views only passively in The Thousand and One Churches, possibly in deference to Strzygowski, whom she still highly respected in this early stage of her archaeological career.69 Nevertheless, they hint at her potential for independent thought as well as her growing ability to recognize the entangled, multifaceted manner of cultural exchanges and their manifestations in art and architecture. These outlooks would find ample expression in Bell’s later, more mature scholarly works.

  One other significant element of Bell’s work at Binbirkilise that deserves mention is her photography. The truly enduring strength of The Thousand and One Churches is the richness of Bell’s clear, crisp black-and-white photographs.70 Over 200 of these throughout the work document the site and neighbouring regions’ distinctive churches and associated structures. While they hold no particular artistic or aesthetic merit (attained through careful composition, lighting and balance, as seen in the output of other early archaeological photographers such as John Henry Haynes),71 they cannot be faulted for the clarity they offer of particular architectural features such as carved ornamentation, mouldings, capitals and columns. Bell’s photographs occasionally also emphasize the built and natural environments around the churches, providing a wider context for the settlement and landscape in which they existed (Fig. 1.6). The value of Bell’s photographs of Binbirkilise is all the more apparent when one realizes that many of the site’s structures no longer exist, having either severely crumbled or disappeared altogether (Fig. 1.7). The rapid deterioration of the ruins had already been noted by earlier explorers of the site, including Bell herself, and indeed, part of her motivation to acquire a good photographic record had been her observation of the churches’ decline.72 Altogether, Bell’s talent for archaeological photography, practised at Binbirkilise, is a distinctive, much valued feature of her archaeological approach, and it continued into her subsequent investigations, often to great effect.

  Fig. 1.6 Bell’s photograph of several ruined Byzantine churches at Binbirkilise (south central Turkey), with the hills of the Karadağ range visible behind. Panoramic images such as these, which Bell started taking in 1907, capture nicely the natural landscapes in which ancient sites were situated.

  By the time Bell’s Anatolian campaign concluded in 1907, archaeology had become, at least for the time being, the principal calling in her life. Her mountain-climbing exploits, as successful and exciting as they had been, had ceased, and her far-ranging travels that had taken her across the globe now became focused largely on the Near East. Bell’s numerous journeys through the Levant and Anatolia had by this time given her exhilarating first-hand experiences with archaeological remains, and her studies and encouragement by Salomon Reinach had further fuelled her archaeological pursuits and given them a scholarly legitimacy. Finally, her intensive fieldwork and research at Binbirkilise had developed her archaeological skills and knowledge to the point where she could now justifiably count herself among a small group of learned scholars from around the world who were experts on the study of Late Antiquity in the Near East.

  Fig. 1.7 The ruined interior of Church No. 1 at Binbirkilise (fifth century CE), looking towards its apse.

  But this wasn’t enough for Bell. If anything, her achievements whetted her appetite for more ambitious enterprises, and fields of study in which she was thus far only a novice. Moreover, they drew her further and further eastwards, into Mesopotamia, where only a small few Europeans had journeyed before her, and an even smaller number had cared to document its ancient remains. This land, once the ‘cradle of civilization’, now beckoned to her, and she longed to see its sweeping rivers, wide, dusty plains, and abundance of ruined places, reaching back to the very dawn of history.

  CHAPTER 2

  EUPHRATES JOURNEY

  In a darkened, vaulted corridor of a noisy bazaar in Aleppo, Bell's servant Fattuh purchased string from a shopkeeper. The hank of twine was intended for the long journey upon which they were about to embark, and amid encouragement from passers-by and Bell herself, who were gathered around the stall, Fattuh endeavoured to get the best price for it. The scene nicely evokes the anticipation and excitement felt at the onset of travel and exploration in the Near East. Moreover, the setting in the old covered marketplace – from which Bell could see the sun casting its light upon the even more ancient Citadel at Aleppo – gave a sensation of timelessness, where the past blended seamlessly into the present. One could imagine the act of haggling over string being played out time and time again over hundreds of years in the antique bazaar.

  This is the scene Bell gives her readers in the opening pages of her travel book Amurath to Amurath, the account of her long, exploratory expedition down the Euphrates River into the lands of Mesopotamia in the early months of 1909.1 The theme so evocatively introduced in these opening pages, of past and present being melded together, carries on through Bell's entire travelogue, moving the reader between her encounters with the contemporary peoples, towns and landscapes of the Near East, and their rich and eventful histories. Aleppo, a city that ‘readily leads one back into the past’ with its old bazaars, walls and mosques, was a perfect place to begin the narrative of this unique journey, in which the author describes and celebrates both the historical and the here and now.2

  Bell's extensive journeys in the Near East, especially those through Palestine, Syria and Anatolia in 1905 and her more recent expedition to Anatolia in 1907, had made her a seasoned traveller. She had become well accustomed to life on the road, and indeed revelled in it, riding every day, eating food prepared by Fattuh over an open fire and sleeping in a simple tent. Her fluency in Arabic and Turkish facilitated interactions with the local inhabitants, Ottoman officials and her entourage of guides, guards and muleteers. Her skill and experience had made her travels relatively untroubled and efficient, and for the most part she passed through places both familiar and remote with an elation and excitement for the road that attested to her voyager's spirit. By 1909, she had become fully aware of and attuned to the past, and it resonated strongly for her wherever she ventured in the Near East. History and archaeology held such a fascination for her that they now took centre stage. The cities and towns she would visit, the route she had planned, all were designed to enable her to connect with ancient places, to record their monuments and to chronicle the stories of the legendary rulers who had once conquered their strongholds and inhabited their lofty halls.

  The route of Bell's 1909 Near Eastern journey, which followed the eastern bank of the Euphrates River in northern Syria down into southern Mesopotamia (southern Iraq) before turning northwards and following the Tigris River up into Anatolia (Fig. 2.1), was clearly selected with her archaeological interests in mind, and these were nicely combined with her taste for travelling through remote locales that other Western travellers had seldom frequented. Even by the early part of the twentieth century, many parts of her proposed route had rarely been visited by Europeans, and its geography, inhabitants and settlements had been only cursorily recorded. The fact that she would be passing through regions where ancient remains were known to be rich and plentiful but still poorly documented further enhanced the pioneering, exploratory nat
ure of her trip.

  Fig. 2.1 Map of Bell’s 1909 Near Eastern journey, showing her route along the eastern bank of the Euphrates River, excursion to Ukhaidir, and journey through Mesopotamia and Anatolia.

  Bell's planned study of the archaeological remains she would visit during this expedition, however, would be challenging. Not only were there materials dated to Late Classical Antiquity, a period with which she had considerable expertise through her previous work in Anatolia, but there also were remains from both earlier and later eras. The Euphrates River valley and the regions of Mesopotamia on her itinerary were rich in pre-Classical cultures, some hailing back to prehistoric periods over 5,000 years ago. At the same time, she would be venturing through regions that had supported the rich Islamic cultures that came after Late Antiquity, and with them she would have the opportunity to trace art and architectural forms through to their later manifestations, assessing the degree to which they adopted, rejected or transformed earlier Classical forms. In all, the journey would expose Bell to an incredibly rich and varied feast of archaeological remains that attested to the lives and cultures of humans over thousands of years, and she would need steady determination and diligence to keep a careful written and photographic record of all that she came upon. Moreover, at the journey's end back in England, her scholarly abilities would be further tested by the additional research she would need to carry out to make sense of the dates and significance of these remains.

  Influences

  Bell's itinerary was not devised solely from her own aims and ambitions. She consulted with respected friends and colleagues who were familiar with the regions through which she would pass, receiving from them advice, encouragement and inspiration. Two individuals in particular should be mentioned for their impact on her 1909 trip. They provided her with the most detailed guidance on the specific regions through which she should travel and gave her important background information about the cultures she was likely to encounter. These individuals also had an impact on Bell's methodological approach to the archaeological remains she found, and the emphases she gave to particular materials and their interpretation.