1. T. E. Lawrence to V. W. Richards, 26.8.1911, DG p. 120.

Pencil, ink and watercolour, both 29 x 23

Provenance: Working papers of the British Museum’s Carchemish excavations, Department of Western Asiatic Antiquities.

By Reginald Campbell Thompson with autograph note by T. E. Lawrence, 1911

Lawrence had learned how to identify and catalogue medieval pottery at Oxford, and Hogarth therefore put him in charge of pottery finds at Carchemish. At first very little was found; the city had been sacked at some stage in its history and few small objects survived in the area where the excavations began. It was only much later in the trial season, after Hogarth had returned to England, that pottery began to be discovered in quantity. In particular, numerous Bronze Age cups shaped like champagne glasses were found in cist graves on the mound.

But for these pottery finds it is doubtful that the excavations would have been continued after the trial season. Lawrence wrote to Vyvyan Richards in late August: 'Hogarth is pressing the British Museum for a second season at Carchemish as a result of the wonderful pottery finds of the last two months . . . my star is in the ascendant as you can imagine.'¹ These coloured drawings are referred to in a letter from Lawrence to Hogarth of 6 August. They were necessary for the purposes of identification since there was no colour film at that date.