British Museum, 21 November 1913

Facsimile

In 1913 the British Agent in Cairo, Lord Kitchener, decided that military considerations made it very desirable to survey a narrow triangle of land stretching north from Akaba to Beersheba and the Dead Sea.

There were already good maps of the adjoining regions, but this area to the west of the Egyptian frontier in Sinai was under Turkish control, and it was not possible to send a survey party of Royal Engineers there without some good excuse.

In the autumn of 1913 the War Office approached the Palestine Exploration Fund, under whose auspices the Survey of Palestine had been carried out (by Kitchener himself) many years previously. It was agreed that the new survey should be presented as an extension of this earlier work in Palestine, and the PEF therefore decided that it would be proper to send an archaeologist to examine any biblical remains in the region.

Their first choice was the Egyptologist T. E. Peet, but he was not available at the required time. D. G. Hogarth, who was a member of the PEF committee, then suggested that Leonard Woolley might go. The idea was taken up by Frederic Kenyon at the British Museum, who suggested that both Woolley and Lawrence might be sent, and wrote accordingly to Sir Charles Watson, Chairman of the PEF Committee. Kenyon's enthusiasm was not entirely academic: the British Museum had agreed to keep Woolley and Lawrence at Carchemish during the break between digging seasons on half pay, as this was cheaper than their return expenses to England. If they were paid by the PEF to take part in the Sinai survey, the Museum would be relieved of considerable expense.

The Letter reads:

British Museum
London: W. C.

Nov. 21st 1913

Dear Sir Charles,

Hogarth concurs in the idea of lending our men from Jerablus to the P. E. F. survey for about two months from the latter part of December, and supports that, as the time is short, both should go. Their names are C. L. Woolley and T. E. Lawrence. The former is the senior man, with rather wider experience; the latter is the better at colloquial Arabic, and gets on very well with natives. He has, I think, more of the instincts of an explorer, but is very shy.

Time being short, I have written already to Jerablus, to ask if either or both care to entertain the idea, and to cable their answer. I have warned them that you may have engaged some one else in the interval, or that you may not be able to take both of them. You are therefore quite uncommitted, and can take either, neither, or both when their answer comes. Both are good men: Hogarth can tell you more about them, if you wish.

Yours sincerely

F.G. Kenyon