Come, Tell Me How You Live: An Archaeological Memoir

And dig upon a Tell!

Foreword (#uf29e63f9-9267-5796-a4ec-677542c2a959)

This book is an answer. It is the answer to a question that is asked me very often.

‘So you dig in Syria, do you? Do tell me all about it. How do you live? In a tent?’ etc., etc.

Most people, probably, do not want to know. It is just the small change of conversation. But there are, now and then, one or two people who are really interested.

It is the question, too, that Archaeology asks of the Past—Come, tell me how you lived?

And with picks and spades and baskets we find the answer.

‘These were our cooking pots.’ ‘In this big silo we kept our grain.’ ‘With these bone needles we sewed our clothes.’ ‘These were our houses, this our bathroom, here our system of sanitation!’ ‘Here, in this pot, are the gold earrings of my daughter’s dowry.’ ‘Here, in this little jar, is my make-up.’ ‘All these cook-pots are of a very common type. You’ll find them by the hundred. We get them from the Potter at the corner. Woolworth’s, did you say? Is that what you call him in your time?’

Occasionally there is a Royal Palace, sometimes a Temple, much more rarely a Royal burial. These things are spectacular. They appear in newspapers in headlines, are lectured about, shown on screens, everybody hears of them! Yet I think to one engaged in digging, the real interest is in the everyday life—the life of the potter, the farmer, the tool-maker, the expert cutter of animal seals and amulets—in fact, the butcher, the baker, the candlestick-maker.

A final warning, so that there will be no disappointment. This is not a profound book—it will give you no interesting sidelights on archaeology, there will be no beautiful descriptions of scenery, no treating of economic problems, no racial reflections, no history.

It is, in fact, small beer—a very little book, full of everyday doings and happenings.

AGATHA CHRISTIE MALLOWAN

CHAPTER 1 (#uf29e63f9-9267-5796-a4ec-677542c2a959)

Partant pour la Syrie (#uf29e63f9-9267-5796-a4ec-677542c2a959)

In a few weeks’ time we are starting for Syria!

Shopping for a hot climate in autumn or winter presents certain difficulties. One’s last year’s summer clothes, which one has optimistically hoped will ‘do’, do not ‘do’ now the time has come. For one thing they appear to be (like the depressing annotations in furniture removers’ lists) ‘Bruised, Scratched and Marked’. (And also Shrunk, Faded and Peculiar!) For another—alas, alas that one has to say it!—they are too tight everywhere.

So—to the shops and the stores, and:

‘Of course, Modom, we are not being asked for that kind of thing just now! We have some very charming little suits here—O.S. in the darker colours.’

Oh, loathsome O.S.! How humiliating to be O.S.! How even more humiliating to be recognized at once as O.S.!

(Although there are better days when, wrapped in a lean long black coat with a large fur collar, a saleswoman says cheeringly:

‘But surely Modom is only a Full Woman?’)

I look at the little suits, with their dabs of unexpected fur and their pleated skirts. I explain sadly that what I want is a washing silk or cotton.

‘Modom might try Our Cruising Department.’

Modom tries Our Cruising Department—but without any exaggerated hopes. Cruising is still enveloped in the realms of romantic fancy. It has a touch of Arcady about it. It is girls who go cruising—girls who are slim and young and wear uncrushable linen trousers, immensely wide round the feet and skintight round the hips. It is girls who sport delightfully in Play Suits. It is girls for whom Shorts of eighteen different varieties are kept!

The lovely creature in charge of Our Cruising Department is barely sympathetic.

‘Oh, no, Modom, we do not keep out-sizes.’ (Faint horror! Outsizes and Cruising? Where is the romance there?)

She adds:

‘It would hardly be suitable, would it?’

I agree sadly that it would not be suitable.

There is still one hope. There is Our Tropical Department.

Our Tropical Department consists principally of Topees—Brown Topees, White Topees; Special Patent Topees. A little to one side, as being slightly frivolous, are Double Terais, blossoming in pinks and blues and yellows like blooms of strange tropical flowers. There is also an immense wooden horse and an assortment of jodhpurs.

But—yes—there are other things. Here is suitable wear for the wives of Empire Builders. Shantung! Plainly cut shantung coats and skirts—no girlish nonsense here—bulk is accommodated as well as scragginess! I depart into a cubicle with various styles and sizes. A few minutes later I am transformed into a memsahib!

I have certain qualms—but stifle them. After all, it is cool and practical and I can get into it.

I turn my attention to the selection of the right kind of hat. The right kind of hat not existing in these days, I have to have it made for me. This is not so easy as it sounds.

What I want, and what I mean to have, and what I shall almost certainly not get, is a felt hat of reasonable proportions that will fit on my head. It is the kind of hat that was worn some twenty years ago for taking the dogs for a walk or playing a round of golf. Now, alas, there are only the Things one attaches to one’s head—over one eye, one ear, on the nape of one’s neck—as the fashion of the moment dictates—or the Double Terai, measuring at least a yard across.

I explain that I want a hat with a crown like a Double Terai and about a quarter of its brim.

‘But they are made wide to protect fully from the sun, Modom.’

‘Yes, but where I am going there is nearly always a terrific wind, and a hat with a brim won’t stay on one’s head for a minute.’

‘We could put Modom on an elastic.’

‘I want a hat with a brim no larger than this that I’ve got on.’

‘Of course, Modom, with a shallow crown that would look quite well.’

‘Not a shallow crown! The hat has got To Keep On!’

Victory! We select the colour—one of those new shades with the pretty names: Dirt, Rust, Mud, Pavement, Dust, etc.

A few minor purchases—purchases that I know instinctively will either be useless or land me in trouble. A Zip travelling bag, for instance. Life nowadays is dominated and complicated by the remorseless Zip. Blouses zip up, skirts zip down, ski-ing suits zip everywhere. ‘Little frocks’ have perfectly unnecessary bits of zipping on them just for fun.

Why? Is there anything more deadly than a Zip that turns nasty on you? It involves you in a far worse predicament than any ordinary button, clip, snap, buckle or hook and eye.

In the early days of Zips, my mother, thrilled by this delicious novelty, had a pair of corsets fashioned for her which zipped up the front. The results were unfortunate in the extreme! Not only was the original zipping-up fraught with extreme agony, but the corsets then obstinately refused to de-zip! Their removal was practically a surgical operation! And owing to my mother’s delightful Victorian modesty, it seemed possible for a while that she would live in these corsets for the remainder of her life—a kind of modern Woman in the Iron Corset!

I have therefore always regarded the Zip with a wary eye. But it appears that all travelling bags have Zips.

‘The old-fashioned fastening is quite superseded, Modom,’ says the salesman, regarding me with a pitying look.

‘This, you see, is so simple,’ he says, demonstrating.

There is no doubt about its simplicity—but then, I think to myself, the bag is empty.