Petrie emphasized that all archaeological research “lies in the noting and comparison of the smallest details,” advice from which Lawrence could surely benefit, and with which he agreed. In the end Lawrence not only learned a lot from Petrie, as Hogarth had surely intended, but came to like and respect him, despite their unpropitious first meeting. As for Petrie, he offered Lawrence Ј700, a not inconsiderable sum, toward the expense of two seasons investigating several sites on the Persian Gulf, which Lawrence was very tempted to accept if the resumption of the Carchemish dig fell through.

However, during Lawrence’s one-month stay in Egypt—he may be the only visitor to pass through Cairo without bothering to see the Pyramids—Hogarth had unexpectedly tapped into a wealthy source for carrying forward the Carchemish digging. By the time Lawrence arrived back there early in February, the matter of financing was settled, and the opportunity to dig for Petrie vanished for the moment. Perhaps this was just as well, for Lawrence’s commitment to a career in archaeology was never total. Lawrence was happy at Jerablus—happier than he would ever be in his life again—but he was never tempted by the academic life.

The world of caravans, camels, desert, and Bedouin nomads would hold Lawrence to the Middle East for the next three years, except for brief visits home, and spare him the decision about what career to follow, until at last the outbreak of World War I thrust him into the career for which he had been training himself all his life.

Lawrence arrived at Aleppo to find the Turkish authorities making difficulties about the resumption of work at Carchemish; nor had the moneyarrived with which to begin a new house for the archaeologists, nearer to the site. The years 1911 to 1914 were difficult ones for foreigners in Turkey—the country’s political instability combined with a series of humiliating military defeats and territorial losses for the Ottoman Empire in Libya at the hands of Italy, and in the Balkans at the hands of Serbia, Greece, Montenegro, and Bulgaria, intensified the siege mentality of the Turkish government and its hostility to foreigners, and encouraged fear of the Russians and, therefore, a closer relationship with Germany. In the course of the nineteenth century Turkey had seen itself deprived of all its North African possessions, from Egypt to Morocco, and all its Balkan possessions except for a tiny enclave around Constantinople; of course, this made the Turks all the more determined to hold on to their Arabian possessions.

Lawrence kicked his heels in Aleppo for nearly two weeks, happy to be out of Egypt, buying small antiquities for Hogarth and the Ashmolean Museum, bargaining for a long camel-hair cloak for himself (“such as Bedouin sheiks wear: Baghdad made: very warm and beautiful”), and keeping himself going by borrowing from the British consul until money arrived from the British Museum. He spent much time searching for an armorer who still made chain mail as it had been made at the time of the Crusades, for the benefit of a friend in Oxford who shared his interest in armor. He wrote home often—in one letter, he expresses satisfaction that his brother Frank is keeping up with his shooting, and urges Frank “to do a little revolver work: it is harder than a rifle to learn, and more often necessary,” a typically offhand remark that separates Lawrence from other archaeological assistants, few of whom would have felt that revolver marksmanship was a necessity. He seems to have been reading a lot—Maurice Hewlett’s Richard Yea-and-Nay, a historical novel about Richard I, for the ninth time, Lawrence claimed; and William Morris’s “Victorian-Icelandic-Anglo-Saxon-German epic poem” Sigurd the Volsung. This is a revealing choice of books. Hewlett was a prolific English writer of romantic historical fiction; he was a friend of Ezra Pound and of J. M. Barrie, the author of Peter Pan, and was famous and successful in his time,though he is largely forgotten now. His novel about Richard Coeur de Lion is a frankly hero-worshipping and meticulously detailed portrait of one of Lawrence’s favorite medieval kings. Morris’s hero, Sigurd, is the central figure of Norse myth and legend, the dragon slayer and hero of the Volsunga Saga, and Wagner’s inspiration for the Ring cycle. Morris transformed Sigurd into a noble Victorian hero, a kind of fantasy preux chevalier, in what one biographer of Lawrence calls “a transparently Oedipal tale."* Both books are about the trials and tribulations of a hero as he passes from one dangerous adventure to another toward his fate: betrayal by a woman. It is hard to imagine anyone reading Hewlett’s novel nine times, unless he identified in some way with Richard I. As for Sigurd’s doom-laden (and pagan) story, it seems unlikely that Thomas and Sarah Lawrence would have shared their son’s enthusiasm. As is so often the case with Lawrence, his interests and enthusiasms seemed to be drawing him toward a life in the heroic mold, for the moment still in the form of literary fantasy, even while on the practical, day-to-day level he pursued archaeology.

Once he arrived in Jerablus, after a three-day walk over rough country, followed by a recalcitrant mule train carrying the expedition’s supplies, Lawrence was like a man back in his element. Physical discomfort, danger, and exhaustion acted on him like a tonic. He gathered a workforce; had the foundations for the expedition house dug; and argued over the ownership of the mound with a greedy local landowner who claimed it, and with a Turkish police lieutenant who ordered him to stop the digging. By the first week in March he was back in Aleppo, to pick up Woolley—there was a certain amount of excitement in the foreign community, since all Italians were being expelled from Turkey because of the war in Libya, and it was therefore possible to buy their collections of antiquities atbargain-basement prices. Then, a week later, Woolley and Lawrence went to Biridjik together, to confront the kaimakam over the order to stop the digging and the interference from the local landowner.

Lawrence might easily have resented Woolley’s presence, since Woolley was senior to him, and a more experienced archaeologist, but fortunately Woolley behaved exactly the right way for an Englishman confronting an Asian official, and told the kaimakam that he would shoot on the spot anyone who “interrupted the digs.” He apparently spoke with enough high-handed vigor and righteous British indignation to cow the kaimakam, who had, of course, arranged the various attempts to stop the digging in the hope of extracting a bribe for himself. Woolley thereby won Lawrence’s instant and lasting respect and friendship. Those who thought Lawrence was mild saw only his short stature, his slight figure, and the boyish shock of unruly fair hair, and failed to notice the icy blue eyes and the large, firm jaw: he was quite capable of acting just like one of Kipling’s pukka sahibs when aroused, and he thoroughly approved of Woolley’s boldly threatening the Turkish police chief in the chief’s own office, as well as Woolley’s parting shot: that he was declaring war not against the Turkish government, but only against the kaimakam.

Woolley acquired further merit in Lawrence’s eyes by admiring Lawrence’s pottery finds (and agreeing with most of Lawrence’s theories about them) and showing a preference for Syrian over Egyptian cooking. Since Woolley could not speak or understand the local dialect, he needed Lawrence to translate for him, as well as deal with the workforce—not always an easy task, since almost every adult male was armed, and every find was proclaimed with a fusillade of shots. Even the cook, “the staid Haj Wahid,” worked with a Mauser pistol stuffed into his sash and a Martini-Henry rifle by his bedroll, and at one point fired ten shots through the goat-hair roof of the tent in celebration; the holes then had to be darned.