A Woman in Arabia by Gertrude Bell

March 1902
    You should see me shopping in Smyrna—quite like a native, only I ought to have more flashing eyes. At Pergamos, I went all over the Acropolis and examined temples and palaces and theatres and the great altar of which the friezes are at Berlin.
    Sardis, March 3, 1902
    I’ve just succeeded in getting a second hand Herodotus * in French to my enormous delight. . . .
    Sardis, March 7, 1902
    I was delighted that I had Herodotus so fresh in my mind. . . . It’s a madly interesting place. . . .
    Sardis, March 9, 1902
    Some day I shall come and travel here with tents, but then I will speak Turkish, which will not be difficult. . . .
    Paris, November 7, 1904
    After lunch I drove out, left some cards and went to see Salomon Reinach, whom I found enthusiastically delighted to see me. There were 2 other men there. . . . We sat for an hour or more while Salomon and Ricci piled books round me and poured information into my ears. It was delightful to hear the good jargon of the learned. . . . But bewildering. This morning I read till 11 about Byzantine MSS, which I’m going to see at the Bibliothéque Nationale; then I went shopping with the Stanleys and bought a charming little fur jacket to ride in in Syria—yes, I did! Then I came in and read till 2 when Salomon fetched me and we went together to the Louvre. We stayed till 4.30—it was enchanting. . . . There is nothing more wonderful than to go to a museum with my dear Salomon. We passed from Egypt through Pompeii and back to Alexandria. We traced the drawing of horns from Greece to Byzantium. We followed the lines ofByzantine art into early Europe . . . while Salomon developed an entirely new theory about eyelids . . . and illustrated it with a Pheidean bust and a Scopas head. It
was
nice.
    November 11, 1904
    I’ve seen all the ivories that concern me, and I find to my joy that I am beginning to be able to place them. . . . This happy result is a good deal caused by having looked through such masses of picture books with Reinach. Last night he set me guessing what things were—even Greek beads—it was a sort of examination—I really think I passed. Reinach was much pleased but then he loves me so dearly that perhaps he is not a good judge. He has simply set all his boundless knowledge at my disposal. . . .
    On Her 1905 Expedition Through the Syrian Desert to Asia Minor Qallat Semaan, March 31, 1905
    I have had the most delightful day today, playing at being an archaeologist.
    April 3, 1905
    I shall not forget the misery of copying a Syrian inscription in the drenching rain, holding my cloak round my book to keep the paper dry. The devil take all Syrian inscriptions, they are so horribly difficult to copy.
    Anavarza, April 21, 1905
    I got up at dawn and at 6 o’clock started out to grapple with my churches. . . . I took my soldier with me and taught him to hold the measuring tape. He soon understood what I wanted and measured away at doors and windows like one to the mannerborn. . . . One of the biggest of the churches is razed to the ground. . . . I looked round about for any scraps of carving that might give an indication of the style of decoration and found, after much search, one and one only—and it was dated! It was a big stone which from the shape and the mouldings I knew to have been at the spring of two arches of the windows of the apse, and the date was carved in beautiful raised Greek letters between the two arch mouldings—“The year 511.”
    Two things I dislike in Anavarza. The mosquitoes and the snakes; the mosquitoes have been the most hostile of the two: the snakes always bustle away in a great hurry and I have made no experiments as to what their bite would be like. There are quantities of them among the ruins. They are about 3 ft long—I wonder if they are