Gertrude Bell (Gertrude Margaret Lowthian Bell) Biography

British writer on travel and archaeology, born in Washington, County Durham, educated at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford; she subsequently acquired Persian and Arabic in the course of her extensive travels. In 1905 she began some ten years' work as an archaeologist. The Desert and the Sown (1907) formed an account of her first major expedition, which took her from Jerusalem to Konya in Turkey. She sustained a long friendship with T. E. Lawrence after meeting him at the Carchemish excavations in 1911. The Thousand and One Churches (1909) and The Palace and Mosque at Ukhaidir (1914) are her most notable archaeological works. Recruited as an intelligence officer in 1915, she conducted liaison work throughout the Middle East and was posted in 1917 to Baghdad, where she founded Iraq's National Museum in 1923 and was chiefly resident until her death. Her other works include the translations of Poems from the Divan of Hafiz (1897) and the travel writings of Safar Nameh: Persian Pictures (1894) and Amurath to Amurath (1911). Her Letters (1927) were edited by Florence Bell. Susan Goodman's biography of Bell appeared in 1985.