Come, Tell Me How You Live: An Archaeological Memoir

Max says certainly not, as he has never seen him drive.

‘But,’ says ’Isa, ‘I have wound the handle of Big Mary on a cold morning. You have seen that?’

Max admits that he has seen that.

‘Then,’ says ’Isa, ‘you can recommend me!’

CHAPTER 3 (#ulink_419029d7-9239-53b2-9acc-fbb00bbafe9b)

The Habur and the Jaghjagha (#ulink_419029d7-9239-53b2-9acc-fbb00bbafe9b)

These autumn days are some of the most perfect I have ever known. We get up early, soon after sunrise, drink hot tea, and eat eggs and start off. It is cold then, and I wear two jerseys and a big woolly coat. The light is lovely—a very faint soft rose softens the browns and greys. From the top of a mound one looks out over an apparently deserted world. Mounds rise everywhere—one can see perhaps sixty if one counts. Sixty ancient settlements, that is to say. Here, where nowadays only the tribesmen move with their brown tents, was once a busy part of the world. Here, some five thousand years ago, was the busy part of the world. Here were the beginnings of civilization, and here, picked up by me, this broken fragment of a clay pot, hand-made, with a design of dots and cross-hatching in black paint, is the forerunner of the Woolworth cup out of which this very morning I have drunk my tea…

I sort through the collection of sherds which are bulging the pockets of my coat (I have already had to mend the lining twice), throwing away duplicate types, and see what I can offer in competition with Mac and Hamoudi to the Master for judgement.

Now then, what have I got?

A thickish grey ware, part of the rim of a pot (valuable as showing shape), some coarse red stuff, two fragments of painted pots, hand-made and one with the dot design (the oldest Tell Halaf!), a flint knife, part of the base of a thin grey pot, several other nondescript bits of painted pottery, a little bit of obsidian.

Max makes his selection, flinging most pieces ruthlessly away, uttering appreciative grunts at others. Hamoudi has the clay wheel of a chariot, and Mac has a fragment of incised ware and a portion of a figurine.

Gathering the united collection together, Max sweeps it into a little linen bag, ties it carefully up, and labels it as usual with the name of the Tell on which it was found. This particular Tell is not marked on the map. It is christened Tell Mak in honour of Macartney, who has had the first find.

So far as Mac’s countenance can express anything at all, it seems to express faint gratification.

We run down the side of the Tell and climb into the car. I peel off a jersey. The sun is getting hot.

We visit two more small Tells, and at the third, which overlooks the Habur, we have lunch—hard-boiled eggs, a tin of bully beef, oranges, and extremely stale bread. Aristide makes tea on the primus. It is very hot now, and the shadows and colours have gone. All is a uniform soft pale buff.

Max says it is lucky we are doing the survey now and not in spring. I ask why? And he says, because it would be far more difficult to find sherds when there is vegetation everywhere. All this, he says, will be green in the spring. It is, he says, the fertile Steppe. I say admiringly that that is a very grand way of putting it. Max says, well, it is the fertile Steppe!

Today we take Mary up the right bank of the Habur to Tell Halaf, visiting Tell Ruman (sinister name, but actually not noticeably Roman) and Tell Juma on the way.

All the Tells in this region have possibilities, unlike the ones farther south. Sherds of pottery of the second and third millennium are frequent and Roman remains are scanty. There is early prehistoric painted hand-made pottery as well. The difficulty will be to choose between so many Tells. Max repeats again and again with jubilation and a complete lack of originality that this is undoubtedly the place!

Our visit to Tell Halaf has something of the reverence of a pilgrimage to a shrine! Tell Halaf is a name that has been so constantly dinned into my ears for the last few years that I can hardly believe I am actually going to see the actual spot. A very lovely spot it is, with the Habur winding round the base of it.

I recall a visit we paid to Baron von Oppenheim in Berlin when he took us to the Museum of his finds. Max and he talked excitedly for (I think) five solid hours. There was nowhere to sit down. My interest, at first acute, flagged, and finally died down completely. With lack-lustre eyes I examined the various extremely ugly statues which had come from Tell Halaf, and which in the Baron’s view were contemporary with the extremely interesting pottery. Max was endeavouring to differ politely on this point without contradicting him flatly. To my dazed glance all the statues seemed strangely alike. It was only after a little while that I made the discovery that they were alike, since all but one were plaster reproductions.

Baron von Oppenheim stopped in his eager dissertation to say lovingly: ‘Ah, my beautiful Venus’, and stroke the figure affectionately. Then he plunged back into discussion, and I wished sadly that I could, in the old nursery phrase, cut off my feet and turn up the ends!

We have many local conversations on the various mounds approaching Tell Halaf. All hereabouts are various legends of El Baron—mainly the incredible sums he paid out in gold. Time has exaggerated the amount of gold. Even the German government, one feels, cannot have poured out the streams of precious metal in the way tradition has it! Everywhere north of Hasetshe are small villages and signs of cultivation. Since the arrival of the French and the departure of the Turkish rule, the country is being occupied again for the first time since Roman days.

We get home late. The weather is changing, a wind starts blowing, and it is very unpleasant, dust and sand flying in one’s face and making one’s eyes smart. We have a pleasant dinner with the French, though it has been a difficult business smartening oneself up, or rather, I should say, cleaning oneself up, since a clean blouse for myself and clean shirts for the men is all one can do! We have an excellent dinner and spend a very pleasant evening. We return through driving rain to our tents. An unquiet night, with dogs howling and the tents flapping and straining in the wind.

Forsaking the Habur for the time being, we make an excursion today on the Jaghjagha. An immense mound quite near at hand has excited my interest, until I discover that it is an extinct volcano—the Kawkab.

Our particular objective is one Tell Hamidi, of which we have heard good accounts, but it is difficult to reach, as there is no direct track. It means taking a line across country and the crossing of innumerable little ditches and wadis. Hamoudi is in great spirits this morning. Mac is quietly gloomy, and opines that we shall never get to the mound.

It takes us seven hours of motoring—a very tiring seven hours, with the car sticking more than once and having to be dug out.

Hamoudi surpasses himself on these occasions. He always considers a car as a kind of inferior though swifter horse. In any moment of uncertainty with a wadi ahead, Hamoudi’s voice rises excitedly, giving frenzied orders to Aristide.

‘Quickly—quickly! Give the machine no time to refuse! Rush at it! Rush at it!’

His disgust when Max stops the car and walks ahead to examine the difficulty is extreme. He shakes his head in utter dissatisfaction.

Not so, he seems to say, should you treat a high-mettled and nervous car! Give it no time to reflect and all will be well.

After detours, checks, and the taking on of local guides, we do at last reach the goal. Very beautiful Tell Hamidi looks in the afternoon sun, and it is with a sense of achievement that the car drives proudly up the gentle incline to its summit where we look down on a marsh teeming with wild duck.