1 00:00:15,882 --> 00:00:18,680 It was the birthplace of civilization, 2 00:00:20,186 --> 00:00:25,453 now a barren and exotic landscape, alluring in its mystery. 3 00:00:28,895 --> 00:00:30,055 For thousands of years, 4 00:00:30,196 --> 00:00:32,858 the Middle East had guarded its secrets. 5 00:00:35,769 --> 00:00:37,066 But by the 19th century 6 00:00:37,203 --> 00:00:40,604 it had become a battleground for competing empires 7 00:00:41,341 --> 00:00:45,869 eager for political control and archeological treasure. 8 00:00:47,013 --> 00:00:51,074 It was a time when archeology was intertwined with espionage. 9 00:00:52,185 --> 00:00:55,677 When politics was called "The Great Game". 10 00:00:58,425 --> 00:01:01,861 Into this arena stepped two remarkable Britons 11 00:01:02,862 --> 00:01:06,195 a young adventurer named Austin Henry Layard, 12 00:01:06,332 --> 00:01:10,632 who uncovered the treasures of a fabulous lost civilization, 13 00:01:11,771 --> 00:01:15,002 and a brilliant politician named Gertrude Bell, 14 00:01:15,141 --> 00:01:17,769 the "brains" behind Lawrence of Arabia. 15 00:01:21,114 --> 00:01:24,413 Both would follow their dreams into the desert 16 00:01:24,551 --> 00:01:26,678 changing it forever. 17 00:02:08,528 --> 00:02:10,496 In the spring of 1840, 18 00:02:10,630 --> 00:02:14,191 an intrepid young Englishman found his way to the ancient land 19 00:02:14,334 --> 00:02:18,202 between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, now part of Iraq. 20 00:02:20,740 --> 00:02:23,834 He was on his way towards India to make his fortune. 21 00:02:24,344 --> 00:02:27,142 But there was something about this desert that caught hold of him 22 00:02:27,280 --> 00:02:29,145 and wouldn't let him go. 23 00:02:31,885 --> 00:02:33,978 More than 2,000 years ago, 24 00:02:34,120 --> 00:02:41,151 two mighty empires had ruled this land: Babylonia and Assyria. 25 00:02:43,763 --> 00:02:46,630 Their cities were fabled for their opulence. 26 00:02:47,934 --> 00:02:50,926 Their power rivaled only by each other. 27 00:02:55,575 --> 00:02:58,271 The Assyrians were fearsome warriors. 28 00:02:59,279 --> 00:03:03,773 Eight centuries before Christ, they had marched on the Israelites. 29 00:03:04,517 --> 00:03:11,150 City after city fell before them. Even Jerusalem was under siege. 30 00:03:13,092 --> 00:03:15,390 Thousands of captives were taken, 31 00:03:15,528 --> 00:03:19,294 immortalized as the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. 32 00:03:21,134 --> 00:03:24,103 And all this was written in the Bible. 33 00:03:25,305 --> 00:03:30,174 But now almost all traces of these great civilizations had disappeared. 34 00:03:31,778 --> 00:03:35,942 There was nothing here but desert as far as the eye could see. 35 00:03:38,384 --> 00:03:41,911 Yet in this wasteland, Austin Henry Layard saw the chance 36 00:03:42,055 --> 00:03:43,420 of a lifetime. 37 00:03:46,159 --> 00:03:47,490 In the decade to come, 38 00:03:47,627 --> 00:03:50,596 he would uncover the secrets of this barren desert, 39 00:03:50,730 --> 00:03:54,097 and reveal the truth in a Bible story. 40 00:03:55,635 --> 00:03:59,696 When he saw the mounds and saw this area, he saw opportunity. 41 00:03:59,839 --> 00:04:02,330 He saw opportunity for fame, 42 00:04:02,842 --> 00:04:06,369 and he was looking as a way to make his name and his life. 43 00:04:11,951 --> 00:04:13,248 From his earliest childhood, 44 00:04:13,386 --> 00:04:16,787 Austin Henry Layard was an unusual young man. 45 00:04:18,858 --> 00:04:21,452 Most of his youth was spent in Florence 46 00:04:22,295 --> 00:04:26,026 where he fell in love with that ancient city's history and art. 47 00:04:29,135 --> 00:04:31,296 Formal schooling was not for him, 48 00:04:31,437 --> 00:04:33,928 but he knew almost every painting in the galleries and 49 00:04:34,073 --> 00:04:35,734 churches of the city. 50 00:04:39,812 --> 00:04:45,079 The rest of his time he spent dreaming, lost in stories of adventure. 51 00:04:46,019 --> 00:04:50,513 His favorite was a book only recently translated into English. 52 00:04:53,293 --> 00:04:57,389 The work in which I took the greatest delight was the Arabian Nights. 53 00:05:01,567 --> 00:05:04,695 My imagination became so much excited by it, 54 00:05:04,837 --> 00:05:07,897 that I thought and dreamt of little else. 55 00:05:10,343 --> 00:05:15,371 The Arabian Nights have had no little influence upon my life and career. 56 00:05:17,350 --> 00:05:21,684 To them, I attribute that love of travel and adventure, 57 00:05:21,821 --> 00:05:24,289 which took me to the East. 58 00:05:32,765 --> 00:05:35,495 Ever since Napoleon rediscovered the wonders of Egypt 59 00:05:35,635 --> 00:05:37,034 at the turn of the century, 60 00:05:37,170 --> 00:05:41,038 Europeans had been captivated by the exoticism of the East. 61 00:05:52,518 --> 00:05:54,042 From the time he was a boy, 62 00:05:54,187 --> 00:05:57,645 Austin Henry Layard fell under its spell. 63 00:06:00,460 --> 00:06:02,894 His family tried to make a lawyer of him. 64 00:06:03,029 --> 00:06:08,194 Layard hated the law, but he stuck it out and passed his exams at 22. 65 00:06:11,070 --> 00:06:14,801 Casting about, he learned of a possible job in Ceylon, 66 00:06:14,941 --> 00:06:17,808 a British colony halfway around the world. 67 00:06:19,946 --> 00:06:22,244 It was the chance he had been waiting for. 68 00:06:25,318 --> 00:06:27,843 Layard found another traveler to accompany him 69 00:06:27,987 --> 00:06:31,150 in the overland route through the Ottoman Empire. 70 00:06:32,258 --> 00:06:36,490 In 1839, this was a journey well off the beaten track, 71 00:06:36,629 --> 00:06:39,154 which could take more than a year. 72 00:06:41,501 --> 00:06:44,834 The two men wore Turkish dress to assure safe passage, 73 00:06:44,971 --> 00:06:47,599 and lived out of their saddlebags. 74 00:06:49,208 --> 00:06:53,542 They made their way down into Turkey, the gateway to another world. 75 00:06:58,184 --> 00:07:01,620 This was my first glimpse of Eastern life. 76 00:07:02,955 --> 00:07:06,254 The booths in the covered alleys of the bazaar; 77 00:07:06,392 --> 00:07:09,691 the veiled women gliding through the crowd; 78 00:07:10,463 --> 00:07:13,591 the dim and mysterious light of the place. 79 00:07:15,501 --> 00:07:19,835 I felt myself in a new world, a world of which I had dreamt 80 00:07:19,972 --> 00:07:22,941 since my earliest childhood. 81 00:07:29,549 --> 00:07:32,484 When Austin Henry Layard reached the desert, 82 00:07:32,618 --> 00:07:35,781 he was living his deepest fantasy. 83 00:07:37,190 --> 00:07:40,717 You know how sometimes you go to a place, and it is you, 84 00:07:40,860 --> 00:07:44,159 and you just fit, and you feel comfortable? 85 00:07:44,797 --> 00:07:46,492 I don't think Layard, at that stage in his life, 86 00:07:46,632 --> 00:07:48,964 was comfortable in Victorian England. 87 00:07:49,101 --> 00:07:53,037 But when he got to Petra, in particular, where he was robbed 88 00:07:53,172 --> 00:07:56,437 and had a terrible time, he felt at home 89 00:07:56,576 --> 00:07:58,373 because he felt a kinship with these people 90 00:07:58,511 --> 00:08:01,947 who were very volatile and friendly and outgoing like he was. 91 00:08:04,951 --> 00:08:08,910 Petra also satisfied Layard's fascination with history. 92 00:08:11,357 --> 00:08:15,418 The city's fading grandeur carved from solid rock. 93 00:08:17,797 --> 00:08:20,766 But there were other even more ancient ruins, 94 00:08:20,900 --> 00:08:23,926 and these proved more intriguing still. 95 00:08:26,038 --> 00:08:29,496 One day on his way through the Tigris and Euphrates valley, 96 00:08:29,642 --> 00:08:32,440 he caught sight of something extraordinary 97 00:08:33,579 --> 00:08:36,173 rising out of the flat desert plain. 98 00:08:38,618 --> 00:08:43,078 I saw for the first time the great Mound of Nimrud against 99 00:08:43,222 --> 00:08:45,315 the clear sky. 100 00:08:46,893 --> 00:08:51,296 The impression it made upon me was one never to be forgotten. 101 00:08:54,267 --> 00:08:56,861 Layard vowed that some day he would return 102 00:08:57,003 --> 00:08:59,563 to investigate the mysterious mound. 103 00:09:03,643 --> 00:09:06,203 In the meantime, the romantic young Englishman 104 00:09:06,345 --> 00:09:09,803 lost all interest in continuing on to Ceylon. 105 00:09:23,362 --> 00:09:27,492 For a year, he lived with the Baktiari nomads in Persia, 106 00:09:28,568 --> 00:09:32,868 whose way of life had not changed for 3,000 years. 107 00:09:33,773 --> 00:09:38,938 And it was I think one reason he became the archeologist he did. 108 00:09:39,412 --> 00:09:42,472 He learned how to improvise on the spot; 109 00:09:42,615 --> 00:09:45,948 he learned how to adjust circumstances, 110 00:09:46,085 --> 00:09:47,313 how to live in discomfort; 111 00:09:47,453 --> 00:09:50,718 and above all, how to interact with these people. 112 00:09:57,263 --> 00:09:59,527 His meager funds now growing short, 113 00:09:59,665 --> 00:10:03,260 the enterprising Layard used his facility with different cultures 114 00:10:03,402 --> 00:10:06,997 to get a job with the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. 115 00:10:09,842 --> 00:10:13,869 For three years, he served as a kind of roving reporter. 116 00:10:14,614 --> 00:10:16,605 He was really a secret agent. 117 00:10:16,749 --> 00:10:18,341 A lot of his work was very sensitive, 118 00:10:18,484 --> 00:10:20,782 and negotiating with these sorts of people. 119 00:10:22,888 --> 00:10:25,618 And the skills he gained were priceless, 120 00:10:25,758 --> 00:10:29,455 but it is only a certain sort of person who will gain those skills. 121 00:10:33,099 --> 00:10:37,331 Very outgoing, very entrepreneurial, in a way. 122 00:10:37,470 --> 00:10:41,372 Never at a loss. That's where Layard was brilliant. 123 00:10:45,511 --> 00:10:49,572 Layard's new skills were just the right mix for his next assignment. 124 00:10:51,617 --> 00:10:55,314 A new kind of conflict was heating up in the Middle East. 125 00:10:57,256 --> 00:11:00,384 Ever since Napoleon had brought back treasures from Egypt, 126 00:11:00,526 --> 00:11:04,553 the great powers had been on the lookout for archeological booty. 127 00:11:06,232 --> 00:11:09,633 The idea of museums, temples of the muses, 128 00:11:09,769 --> 00:11:13,705 was one which was capturing the imagination of 19th century Europeans. 129 00:11:13,839 --> 00:11:17,741 The British, the French, the Germans were all building these palaces 130 00:11:17,843 --> 00:11:20,607 in which to place... well, what are they going to place there? 131 00:11:23,683 --> 00:11:27,915 Like Layard, the French recognized the potential of the strange mounds 132 00:11:28,054 --> 00:11:30,545 rising out of the Middle Eastern desert. 133 00:11:33,159 --> 00:11:34,592 Now they had begun to dig, 134 00:11:34,727 --> 00:11:39,221 and at horsabad they were uncovering some very interesting sculptures. 135 00:11:41,801 --> 00:11:45,293 There was certainly a competition between the French and the British 136 00:11:45,438 --> 00:11:48,066 as to who could find the biggest treasures 137 00:11:48,207 --> 00:11:52,610 in order to stock the museums in Paris and London. 138 00:11:53,312 --> 00:11:57,442 And, in fact, newspaper articles and magazines at that time 139 00:11:57,583 --> 00:12:03,886 actually described these finds as "Trophies of empire." 140 00:12:05,291 --> 00:12:09,091 To catch up with the French, Layard persuaded the British ambassador 141 00:12:09,228 --> 00:12:13,392 to fund a trial excavation at his mound at Nimrud. 142 00:12:17,336 --> 00:12:23,935 Within weeks, he was ready to begin, instructed to keep a low profile. 143 00:12:25,344 --> 00:12:31,715 On the 8th of November 1845, having secretly procured a few tools, 144 00:12:31,851 --> 00:12:36,288 and carrying with me a variety of guns, spears and other weapons, 145 00:12:36,422 --> 00:12:41,018 I declared that I was going to hunt wild boars in a neighboring village, 146 00:12:41,160 --> 00:12:45,062 and floated down the Tigris on a small raft. 147 00:12:47,900 --> 00:12:51,563 It was dark by the time Layard arrived at the mound. 148 00:12:52,671 --> 00:12:56,505 Five years had passed since he'd first laid eyes on it. 149 00:12:58,144 --> 00:13:00,305 His head was filled with excitement. 150 00:13:00,446 --> 00:13:03,210 He found it almost impossible to sleep. 151 00:13:10,156 --> 00:13:12,681 Visions of palaces underground, 152 00:13:12,825 --> 00:13:17,888 of sculptured figures and endless inscriptions floated before me. 153 00:13:22,368 --> 00:13:24,233 After forming plan after plan 154 00:13:24,370 --> 00:13:27,828 for removing the earth and extricating these treasures, 155 00:13:27,973 --> 00:13:31,932 I fancied myself wandering in a maze of chambers 156 00:13:32,077 --> 00:13:34,875 from which I could find no outlet. 157 00:13:44,290 --> 00:13:45,723 At dawn the next morning, 158 00:13:45,858 --> 00:13:50,386 the resourceful young Englishman assembled his team and set to work. 159 00:13:54,533 --> 00:13:57,093 He had no experience, very little money, 160 00:13:57,236 --> 00:13:59,966 and no guarantee of success. 161 00:14:01,006 --> 00:14:06,444 He really had no expertise in what he was doing, except his natural talent. 162 00:14:06,579 --> 00:14:10,572 And he was rushing because the French were competing, 163 00:14:10,716 --> 00:14:13,082 and their influence over the Turks could mean that 164 00:14:13,219 --> 00:14:17,121 his license to be digging would quickly be cut off. 165 00:14:17,256 --> 00:14:19,781 And he needed a good find quickly 166 00:14:19,925 --> 00:14:23,224 because he knew that's what would bring the support 167 00:14:23,362 --> 00:14:25,694 from the British government, or from the British Museum, 168 00:14:25,831 --> 00:14:29,062 from the British community to enable him to go on. 169 00:14:34,373 --> 00:14:39,003 Amazingly, on the very first day of digging, Layard hit pay dirt. 170 00:14:40,312 --> 00:14:44,112 A piece of alabaster appeared above the soil. 171 00:14:44,250 --> 00:14:45,239 We could not remove it, 172 00:14:45,384 --> 00:14:50,549 and on digging downward it proved to be the upper part of a large slab. 173 00:14:50,689 --> 00:14:53,954 The men shortly uncovered ten more. 174 00:14:55,160 --> 00:14:59,563 It was evident that the top of a chamber had been discovered. 175 00:15:04,536 --> 00:15:06,629 Digging along the walls of the chamber, 176 00:15:06,772 --> 00:15:11,869 within weeks the men uncovered a series of splendid sculptured panels. 177 00:15:17,082 --> 00:15:20,108 Layard was captivated by their beauty. 178 00:15:20,886 --> 00:15:25,118 But he knew they wouldn't be enough to get the British Museum to fund him. 179 00:15:26,158 --> 00:15:29,184 He was looking for the spectacular sculpture, 180 00:15:29,328 --> 00:15:34,288 which would dazzle the public, and give him fame in London. 181 00:15:34,433 --> 00:15:37,891 I say this not out of a criticism of Layard. 182 00:15:38,037 --> 00:15:42,030 He was penniless. This was his way to fame and fortune. 183 00:15:42,174 --> 00:15:43,368 And he knew it. 184 00:15:52,685 --> 00:15:53,811 A few months later, 185 00:15:53,953 --> 00:15:56,547 Layard was on his way to visit a local sheik 186 00:15:56,689 --> 00:15:58,919 when two horsemen caught up with him. 187 00:16:01,226 --> 00:16:03,217 "Hasten, O Bey," they cried. 188 00:16:03,362 --> 00:16:06,695 "Hasten to the diggers, for they have found Nimrod himself." 189 00:16:16,709 --> 00:16:20,372 Rising out of the earth was a gigantic head. 190 00:16:22,348 --> 00:16:26,148 The workmen were terrified of this colossus they called Nimrod, 191 00:16:26,285 --> 00:16:28,810 and ran off to spread the news. 192 00:16:28,954 --> 00:16:30,979 But Layard was elated. 193 00:16:31,790 --> 00:16:33,553 He'd only been digging a few months, 194 00:16:33,692 --> 00:16:36,525 and here was treasure the French would envy. 195 00:16:42,434 --> 00:16:46,268 Unfortunately, the resulting uproar gave the Ottoman Turks the excuse 196 00:16:46,405 --> 00:16:49,135 they'd been looking for to shut down the dig. 197 00:16:50,943 --> 00:16:54,037 Layard suspected the hand of the French. 198 00:16:57,149 --> 00:17:02,177 Quietly he kept a few men on who unearthed two gigantic sculptures 199 00:17:06,658 --> 00:17:09,218 strange and awe inspiring. 200 00:17:12,798 --> 00:17:14,595 With his knowledge of art history, 201 00:17:14,733 --> 00:17:18,692 Layard knew that he had found an entirely new style of art. 202 00:17:21,840 --> 00:17:26,709 The British Museum agreed and finally gave him the money he needed. 203 00:17:28,180 --> 00:17:31,775 A year after he'd begun, Turkish permission in hand, 204 00:17:31,917 --> 00:17:35,444 Layard launched full scale excavations at Nimrud. 205 00:17:37,556 --> 00:17:40,957 Every day produced some new discovery. 206 00:17:41,093 --> 00:17:43,823 My Arabs entered with alacrity into the work, 207 00:17:43,962 --> 00:17:49,127 and felt almost as much interested in its results as I did myself. 208 00:17:52,704 --> 00:17:55,969 Tunneling along the walls of what turned out to be a palace, 209 00:17:56,108 --> 00:17:58,702 they found hundreds of alabaster sculptures, 210 00:17:58,844 --> 00:18:01,836 some disintegrating from ancient fires. 211 00:18:05,217 --> 00:18:09,176 Layard drew what he could, working from dawn until dusk. 212 00:18:16,762 --> 00:18:20,391 In the evening, after the labor of the day, 213 00:18:20,532 --> 00:18:24,730 I often sat at the door of my tent and gave myself up 214 00:18:24,870 --> 00:18:30,570 to the full enjoyment imparted to the senses by such scenes as these. 215 00:18:32,544 --> 00:18:37,345 I live among the ruins, and dream of little else. 216 00:18:43,722 --> 00:18:47,158 But still Layard had to face his biggest challenge. 217 00:18:47,926 --> 00:18:51,953 Somehow he had to transport his treasures back to London. 218 00:18:54,299 --> 00:18:58,599 It's quite one thing to dig up these large human 219 00:18:58,737 --> 00:19:03,106 headed lions or bas relief, some of which weighed several tons. 220 00:19:03,242 --> 00:19:08,305 And quite another thing to take them back to London or Paris. 221 00:19:08,447 --> 00:19:12,508 And this is where Layard was a genius he had learned to improvise. 222 00:19:12,651 --> 00:19:15,381 He acquired the loyalty of the local people. 223 00:19:15,521 --> 00:19:22,757 He got a cart built, and there were wonderful pictures in his books 224 00:19:22,895 --> 00:19:27,525 of luring these lions with ropes down on to one of the carts, 225 00:19:27,666 --> 00:19:29,691 and the famous occasion when the ropes broke 226 00:19:29,835 --> 00:19:32,360 and the lion fell like this. 227 00:19:33,038 --> 00:19:34,903 And they thought it was broken, but it wasn't. 228 00:19:35,040 --> 00:19:37,770 And the workmen burst into a wild dance. 229 00:19:37,910 --> 00:19:40,208 And they towed this thing to the river. 230 00:19:40,345 --> 00:19:47,342 And they built a raft of timber and supported it on inflated goatskins. 231 00:19:50,022 --> 00:19:53,253 I watched the rafts until they disappeared, 232 00:19:53,392 --> 00:19:57,590 musing upon the strange destiny of their burdens. 233 00:19:57,729 --> 00:20:01,358 After adorning the palaces of Assyrian kings, 234 00:20:01,500 --> 00:20:04,367 they had been buried unknown for centuries 235 00:20:04,503 --> 00:20:10,135 beneath the soil trodden by the Persians, the Greeks and the Arabs. 236 00:20:10,275 --> 00:20:12,835 They were now to cross the most distance seas 237 00:20:12,978 --> 00:20:17,540 to be finally placed in a British museum. 238 00:20:20,719 --> 00:20:23,483 1848. The year of great revolutions in Europe 239 00:20:23,622 --> 00:20:25,590 is the year when all of the Assyrian stuff 240 00:20:25,724 --> 00:20:28,625 that Layard had discovered was first displayed in England, 241 00:20:28,760 --> 00:20:30,728 and it was a sensation. 242 00:20:33,932 --> 00:20:38,369 He was lionized by society. He became a public figure. 243 00:20:40,272 --> 00:20:44,470 A young man who had gone out East and made good. 244 00:20:44,610 --> 00:20:46,703 Look what he had bought for Britain. 245 00:20:49,514 --> 00:20:51,880 Layard wrote a best seller about his adventures 246 00:20:52,017 --> 00:20:55,384 uncovering the impressive civilization of the Assyrians, 247 00:20:56,021 --> 00:20:59,354 lost to history for more than 2,000 years. 248 00:21:02,728 --> 00:21:06,687 But he struggled to understand the strange beasts he'd discovered, 249 00:21:07,299 --> 00:21:09,699 and which had taken London by storm. 250 00:21:12,671 --> 00:21:15,640 This creature stood to either side of the doorway 251 00:21:15,774 --> 00:21:22,703 of an important location in the Assyrian world to guard the way in. 252 00:21:32,124 --> 00:21:34,217 And that lion's body will tear you apart, 253 00:21:34,359 --> 00:21:36,725 and those wings of a bird of prey will overtake you, 254 00:21:36,862 --> 00:21:39,353 and that human head will out think you. 255 00:21:39,498 --> 00:21:42,899 And believe me, the Assyrians believed that, 256 00:21:43,035 --> 00:21:45,299 and would have been suitably intimidated 257 00:21:45,437 --> 00:21:47,428 just as the British were suitably impressed 258 00:21:47,572 --> 00:21:51,440 by this extraordinary exotic creature that he brought back. 259 00:21:53,578 --> 00:21:57,139 The treasures of Assyria were trophies of Empire. 260 00:21:59,151 --> 00:22:01,585 But to many people, they were more. 261 00:22:03,088 --> 00:22:04,988 In the secular 19th century, 262 00:22:05,123 --> 00:22:08,752 the historical validity of the Bible was under attack. 263 00:22:10,362 --> 00:22:14,696 Were its stories true, or were they simply stories? 264 00:22:17,436 --> 00:22:21,805 Perhaps the answer could be found in the mounds of Mesopotamia. 265 00:22:23,375 --> 00:22:25,002 With mounting public interest, 266 00:22:25,143 --> 00:22:29,102 the British Museum decided to fund a second expedition. 267 00:22:30,849 --> 00:22:34,910 In 1849, Layard tackled a mound the French had given up on, 268 00:22:35,053 --> 00:22:37,419 near the banks of the Tigris River. 269 00:22:41,093 --> 00:22:45,120 Tunneling deep inside, he uncovered indisputable evidence 270 00:22:45,263 --> 00:22:50,565 that would prove he had found Nineveh, the biblical capital of Assyria. 271 00:22:54,606 --> 00:22:57,803 Nearly two miles of sculptured alabaster panels 272 00:22:57,943 --> 00:23:01,401 proclaiming the bloody conquests of its kings. 273 00:23:05,951 --> 00:23:10,820 A great library which would unlock the lost history of the Assyrians. 274 00:23:15,660 --> 00:23:19,027 And most extraordinary of all, evidence of the bloody siege 275 00:23:19,164 --> 00:23:23,396 of the Israelite city of Lachish that was depicted in the Bible. 276 00:23:25,971 --> 00:23:27,563 To dig and dig and dig, 277 00:23:27,706 --> 00:23:33,542 then to uncover what you come to recognize both by the images 278 00:23:33,678 --> 00:23:41,244 and then corroborated by the cuneiform descriptions is the siege of Lachish, 279 00:23:41,386 --> 00:23:43,650 The conquest of Lachish, 280 00:23:46,691 --> 00:23:50,092 the carrying of captives from of Lachish of Judean captives. 281 00:23:50,228 --> 00:23:51,456 Judean, the word is there, 282 00:23:51,596 --> 00:23:56,693 back to other parts of Assyria must have been phenomenal. 283 00:24:00,338 --> 00:24:03,603 Here is a site that is mentioned in the Bible. 284 00:24:03,742 --> 00:24:06,575 And, again, is it a real site? 285 00:24:06,711 --> 00:24:10,169 Suddenly, it becomes real. Suddenly, it is three dimensional. 286 00:24:10,315 --> 00:24:12,146 Suddenly, it is tangible, 287 00:24:12,284 --> 00:24:16,846 and that provoked an enthusiasm that has lasted 160 years 288 00:24:16,988 --> 00:24:21,049 until our own time for the archeology of the Near East 289 00:24:21,193 --> 00:24:25,027 with specific respect to its relationship to the Bible. 290 00:24:30,902 --> 00:24:35,430 Layard's remarkable discoveries lifted Assyria from obscurity, 291 00:24:36,007 --> 00:24:39,807 placing it firmly in the pantheon of history's great empires. 292 00:24:42,714 --> 00:24:45,808 He went on to a successful career as a member of Parliament, 293 00:24:45,951 --> 00:24:48,283 and ambassador to Constantinople. 294 00:24:48,420 --> 00:24:52,322 And by the time this Victorian statesman died in 1894, 295 00:24:52,457 --> 00:24:56,291 the Middle East was no longer a forgotten backwater. 296 00:25:00,799 --> 00:25:04,394 The Ottoman Turks were losing their grip on the region, 297 00:25:05,070 --> 00:25:08,039 and it had become a pawn in a game of empire, 298 00:25:08,173 --> 00:25:11,233 veering dangerously out of control. 299 00:25:13,979 --> 00:25:15,276 In the new century, 300 00:25:15,413 --> 00:25:18,576 another British adventurer would help forge an even bigger role 301 00:25:18,717 --> 00:25:20,651 for the crown in the Middle East. 302 00:25:22,654 --> 00:25:27,023 Her name was Gertrude Bell, and she has often been called 303 00:25:27,158 --> 00:25:30,457 the brain behind the exploits of Lawrence of Arabia. 304 00:25:34,566 --> 00:25:36,090 At the close of World War I, 305 00:25:36,234 --> 00:25:39,965 it was she who redrew the map of the Middle East. 306 00:25:41,873 --> 00:25:44,671 She also championed modern archeology, 307 00:25:45,410 --> 00:25:49,506 and insisted that a country had the right to keep its own antiquities. 308 00:25:52,651 --> 00:25:57,918 Born in 1868, Gertrude Bell is in many ways a tragic figure. 309 00:25:58,890 --> 00:26:02,883 Despite a life of achievement, unusual for a woman in her time, 310 00:26:03,028 --> 00:26:06,520 she remained unsatisfied, never convinced that 311 00:26:06,665 --> 00:26:10,897 the treasure she was seeking was truly the one she wanted. 312 00:26:14,673 --> 00:26:15,605 As a teenager, 313 00:26:15,740 --> 00:26:18,231 the red headed young woman spent most of her time 314 00:26:18,376 --> 00:26:20,344 surrounded by books. 315 00:26:23,148 --> 00:26:24,445 Like Austin Henry Layard, 316 00:26:24,583 --> 00:26:29,111 she was captivated by the mysterious world of the Arabian Nights. 317 00:26:40,365 --> 00:26:43,801 This was really the height of British lmperialism in the East, 318 00:26:43,935 --> 00:26:46,995 so that all of these images of the Orient 319 00:26:47,138 --> 00:26:51,768 were even far more prevalent than during Layard's childhood. 320 00:26:52,911 --> 00:27:00,579 The museums by then were stocked with antiquities from Assyria and Babylon. 321 00:27:02,187 --> 00:27:06,283 Gertrude was especially fascinated by the politics of the East. 322 00:27:07,826 --> 00:27:13,423 But she always felt as if she were laboring under a handicapher gender. 323 00:27:14,132 --> 00:27:16,600 I wish I could go to the National Gallery, 324 00:27:16,735 --> 00:27:19,226 but there is no one to take me. 325 00:27:19,771 --> 00:27:24,140 If I were a boy, I should go to that incomparable place every week. 326 00:27:24,275 --> 00:27:28,177 But being a girl, to see lovely things is denied me. 327 00:27:29,814 --> 00:27:32,544 Gertrude was an exceptional child. 328 00:27:32,684 --> 00:27:35,346 As a girl in particular, she was exceptional 329 00:27:35,487 --> 00:27:41,653 because her father encouraged her to read, to learn, 330 00:27:41,793 --> 00:27:45,285 to be adventurous, to explore. 331 00:27:46,164 --> 00:27:49,998 And then she was sent off to Oxford University, 332 00:27:50,135 --> 00:27:53,434 one of the first women to attend Oxford. 333 00:27:53,571 --> 00:27:57,530 And she left there with the highest honors in her field. 334 00:27:59,244 --> 00:28:01,610 Gertrude was 20 years old. 335 00:28:02,514 --> 00:28:05,483 But now, instead of thinking about a suitable career 336 00:28:05,617 --> 00:28:08,450 for a person of her talents, convention dictated that 337 00:28:08,586 --> 00:28:12,420 she go about the business of finding a suitable husband. 338 00:28:13,191 --> 00:28:14,624 She had three chances. 339 00:28:14,759 --> 00:28:18,889 Three seasons in which she was presented to society. 340 00:28:19,030 --> 00:28:24,400 And it was expected that she would find a husband along the way. 341 00:28:30,975 --> 00:28:32,237 She didn't. 342 00:28:34,145 --> 00:28:37,410 Either she didn't like the men who were attracted to her, 343 00:28:37,549 --> 00:28:41,849 or the men she was attracted to were not interested in her. 344 00:28:44,255 --> 00:28:47,713 At the end of the three seasons, she had no husband, 345 00:28:47,859 --> 00:28:52,193 and in British Victorian terms, no future. 346 00:28:53,431 --> 00:28:55,456 For a wealthy young woman like Gertrude, 347 00:28:55,600 --> 00:28:58,068 there was only one solution. 348 00:28:58,703 --> 00:29:00,500 Travel. 349 00:29:04,843 --> 00:29:09,143 Gertrude prevailed upon her father to allow her to visit a family friend 350 00:29:09,280 --> 00:29:12,977 in the place she'd dreamed about ever since she was a child. 351 00:29:15,954 --> 00:29:20,618 When she arrived, she found it everything she'd imagined and more. 352 00:29:22,660 --> 00:29:27,359 "Persia," she wrote in her very first letter home, "is paradise." 353 00:29:29,501 --> 00:29:34,165 Gertrude Bell was 23 years old when she arrived in the city of Tehran 354 00:29:34,305 --> 00:29:37,172 in the spring of 1892. 355 00:29:38,710 --> 00:29:41,201 She began studying the language at once, 356 00:29:41,346 --> 00:29:45,646 and within a few months was translating Persian poems into English. 357 00:29:47,819 --> 00:29:51,585 Soon, she was happier than she'd ever been before. 358 00:29:51,723 --> 00:29:54,283 She had finally met a man worthy of her affections, 359 00:29:54,425 --> 00:29:58,191 a young British diplomat named Henry Cadugan. 360 00:29:59,130 --> 00:30:03,157 It wasn't long before the two of them fell quite madly in love. 361 00:30:07,605 --> 00:30:11,302 He introduced her to the desert, which took her breath away. 362 00:30:13,711 --> 00:30:15,576 But when the two of them wrote to her father 363 00:30:15,713 --> 00:30:20,343 asking for his permission to marry, the answer was slow in coming. 364 00:30:21,619 --> 00:30:27,319 They waited and they waited until finally the answer came. 365 00:30:28,960 --> 00:30:32,521 And it was not what they wanted to hear. 366 00:30:34,165 --> 00:30:36,690 Gertrude's father was very upset. 367 00:30:36,835 --> 00:30:40,464 He had checked out her fiancee, so to speak, 368 00:30:40,605 --> 00:30:45,975 and discovered that he was a gambler, and her father was afraid that 369 00:30:46,110 --> 00:30:51,013 this was not a man who was steady enough, secure enough for his daughter. 370 00:30:51,916 --> 00:30:57,548 And so, as a Victorian daughter, she did what her father told her. 371 00:30:58,156 --> 00:31:03,822 She came home, and she gave the romance time to cool. 372 00:31:05,063 --> 00:31:06,792 For eight months the heartsick 373 00:31:06,931 --> 00:31:10,731 ertrude did everything she could to change her father's mind. 374 00:31:14,505 --> 00:31:17,702 Then a telegram arrived from Tehran. 375 00:31:19,344 --> 00:31:23,576 Henry Cadugan had fallen into an icy river while fishing, 376 00:31:23,715 --> 00:31:26,616 had developed pneumonia and died. 377 00:31:34,525 --> 00:31:35,492 At that moment, 378 00:31:35,627 --> 00:31:39,495 Gertrude knew that she would have to make a life on her own. 379 00:31:45,703 --> 00:31:47,933 But it wasn't until she returned to the Middle East 380 00:31:48,072 --> 00:31:50,097 that she felt like herself again. 381 00:31:53,177 --> 00:31:58,046 In November of 1899, Gertrude arrived in Jerusalem. 382 00:32:00,852 --> 00:32:04,185 I am extremely flourishing, 383 00:32:04,322 --> 00:32:09,658 and so wildly interested in Arabic that I think of nothing else. 384 00:32:10,762 --> 00:32:14,596 I have not seen the moon shine so since I was in Persia. 385 00:32:15,800 --> 00:32:19,258 In England, she could barely venture out without a chaperone. 386 00:32:20,138 --> 00:32:23,164 Here, she could come and go as she pleased. 387 00:32:24,575 --> 00:32:26,941 Once Gertrude Bell arrived in the Middle East, 388 00:32:27,078 --> 00:32:29,103 she felt like a free spirit. 389 00:32:29,247 --> 00:32:34,082 She could really soar, and she did, and she absolutely loved it. 390 00:32:35,153 --> 00:32:37,348 And the Arabs respected her. 391 00:32:37,488 --> 00:32:41,686 They had no problem with her being an independent woman. 392 00:32:43,294 --> 00:32:46,730 From Jerusalem Gertrude began to make a series of sorties 393 00:32:46,864 --> 00:32:49,196 into the uncharted desert. 394 00:32:49,901 --> 00:32:53,837 She learned to ride like a man, comfortable in the saddle. 395 00:32:55,840 --> 00:32:59,571 The barren landscape brought back the happy times with her lost lover, 396 00:32:59,711 --> 00:33:01,235 Henry Cadugan. 397 00:33:03,881 --> 00:33:07,112 It was almost is if she was searching for his soul, 398 00:33:07,251 --> 00:33:10,015 searching for his spirit. 399 00:33:18,863 --> 00:33:21,491 "Daughter of the Desert" the Arabs began to call her, 400 00:33:21,632 --> 00:33:24,499 or sometimes "The Desert Queen." 401 00:33:25,937 --> 00:33:28,371 It was, as she gleefully informed her parents, 402 00:33:28,506 --> 00:33:31,168 her first taste of notoriety. 403 00:33:32,777 --> 00:33:35,507 I am a person in this country. 404 00:33:35,646 --> 00:33:40,413 One of the first questions everyone seems to ask everyone else is, 405 00:33:40,551 --> 00:33:44,214 "Have you ever met Miss Gertrude Bell?" 406 00:33:45,356 --> 00:33:47,051 The quest to be recognized 407 00:33:47,191 --> 00:33:51,184 as a person would haunt Gertrude for the rest of her life. 408 00:33:53,765 --> 00:33:58,566 She sought recognition in a series of fearless treks into the desert, 409 00:33:59,670 --> 00:34:01,399 writing books about her travels, 410 00:34:01,539 --> 00:34:03,939 and documenting the culture and people of the Middle East 411 00:34:04,075 --> 00:34:06,566 in thousands of photographs. 412 00:34:09,380 --> 00:34:12,872 Along the way, she discovered the excitement of archeology, 413 00:34:13,017 --> 00:34:16,817 flourishing here in these years before World War I. 414 00:34:20,058 --> 00:34:23,323 It was like a banquet open for the taking. 415 00:34:28,199 --> 00:34:29,325 At site after site, 416 00:34:29,467 --> 00:34:31,958 archeologists were unearthing the priceless treasures 417 00:34:32,103 --> 00:34:34,663 of humanity's earliest civilizations. 418 00:34:37,842 --> 00:34:42,279 Staking their claims to this booty for their museums back home. 419 00:34:47,485 --> 00:34:50,010 At the ruins of Babylon, Gertrude marveled 420 00:34:50,154 --> 00:34:54,682 as German archeologists brought the imposing city back to life. 421 00:34:55,493 --> 00:34:58,223 It is the most extraordinary place. 422 00:34:58,362 --> 00:35:02,594 I have seldom felt the ancient world come so close. 423 00:35:04,001 --> 00:35:08,995 She stopped to visit English arche ologists at the ruins of Carchemish. 424 00:35:11,375 --> 00:35:13,002 A dig strategically placed 425 00:35:13,144 --> 00:35:17,513 near the construction of a new German railroad through the desert. 426 00:35:20,818 --> 00:35:22,012 One of the archeologists 427 00:35:22,153 --> 00:35:26,055 was a promising young graduate student named T. E. Lawrence. 428 00:35:27,859 --> 00:35:31,556 In these uneasy years before wartime, it wasn't surprising 429 00:35:31,696 --> 00:35:34,256 to see the English doing double duty 430 00:35:34,398 --> 00:35:39,301 digging and keeping watch over the activities of the Germans nearby. 431 00:35:42,874 --> 00:35:46,901 This complete separation between archeology and politics 432 00:35:47,044 --> 00:35:52,311 that we have today or at least that we think exists today 433 00:35:52,450 --> 00:35:54,918 was not true at that time. 434 00:35:59,390 --> 00:36:03,759 Archeology and politics were very closely interrelated. 435 00:36:07,331 --> 00:36:10,095 Gentleman archeologist, gentlewoman archeologist, 436 00:36:10,234 --> 00:36:13,226 gentleman spy, gentlewoman spy. 437 00:36:15,773 --> 00:36:19,834 It was part of what in the 19th century was called "The Great Game." 438 00:36:20,711 --> 00:36:27,048 And there was this constant interplay between archeology and intelligence 439 00:36:27,185 --> 00:36:29,653 at a very informal level. 440 00:36:32,590 --> 00:36:33,852 It is no coincidence 441 00:36:33,991 --> 00:36:38,860 that a lot of archeologists became intelligence officers in World War I, 442 00:36:38,996 --> 00:36:43,865 because they had done it before the war working at archeological sites. 443 00:36:45,403 --> 00:36:48,497 Gertrude was intrigued with archeology, 444 00:36:48,639 --> 00:36:51,233 but she had other things on her mind. 445 00:36:54,845 --> 00:36:58,747 In the spring of 1913, at the age of 45, 446 00:36:58,883 --> 00:37:02,944 she fell hopelessly in love for the second time in her life. 447 00:37:05,723 --> 00:37:08,351 His name was Richard Doughty Wiley, 448 00:37:08,492 --> 00:37:10,983 and he was everything she wanted in a man. 449 00:37:11,128 --> 00:37:14,461 A soldier and a scholar who was handsome and brave, 450 00:37:14,599 --> 00:37:17,534 and radiated British pluck. 451 00:37:19,737 --> 00:37:22,900 Unfortunately, he was also married. 452 00:37:23,474 --> 00:37:25,669 She was completely intrigued with this man, 453 00:37:25,810 --> 00:37:28,301 and fell madly in love with him. 454 00:37:28,446 --> 00:37:30,505 He was a bit of a callous man. 455 00:37:30,648 --> 00:37:32,775 He was a man who was a true womanizer, 456 00:37:32,917 --> 00:37:35,818 and he even told her about some of his other experiences, 457 00:37:35,953 --> 00:37:38,854 which was kind of cruel, I think. 458 00:37:39,724 --> 00:37:42,522 But no matter, she was wildly in love with him, 459 00:37:42,660 --> 00:37:45,720 and he encouraged her and her work. 460 00:37:46,964 --> 00:37:50,661 Secretly they met for a passionate weekend at Gertrude's family home 461 00:37:50,801 --> 00:37:52,632 in the English countryside. 462 00:37:53,771 --> 00:37:58,367 Victorian to her core, she resisted consummating their affair. 463 00:37:58,509 --> 00:38:01,171 The situation seemed hopeless. 464 00:38:02,613 --> 00:38:07,915 And then he was sent off to the Balkans in 1913, 465 00:38:08,052 --> 00:38:11,146 and it was a heartbreaking thing for her, 466 00:38:11,289 --> 00:38:16,784 but it also stimulated her desire to show that she was as adventurous, 467 00:38:16,927 --> 00:38:21,057 as intrepid, as indomitable as Doughty Wiley. 468 00:38:21,198 --> 00:38:26,534 So Gertrude Bell actually set off on the journey of her life. 469 00:38:32,610 --> 00:38:37,206 Her destination was Central Arabia, the vast desert of the Nejd. 470 00:38:40,518 --> 00:38:42,145 Gertrude embarked on a private mission 471 00:38:42,286 --> 00:38:45,847 to meet with two of the desert's most powerful sheiks. 472 00:38:48,793 --> 00:38:53,662 Men whose rivalries had kept the area a no man's land for a generation. 473 00:38:55,800 --> 00:38:59,167 Turkish and British authorities forbade her to go. 474 00:39:01,439 --> 00:39:04,966 But as usual, Gertrude did things her way. 475 00:39:07,478 --> 00:39:12,939 When Gertrude set off on her big expeditions into the desert, 476 00:39:13,084 --> 00:39:19,387 she would take with her Wedgwood china, her crystal stemware, 477 00:39:19,523 --> 00:39:23,960 the silver flatware, her tweed jackets, 478 00:39:24,095 --> 00:39:29,624 her linen clothes, her fur coats, her fringed shawls, 479 00:39:29,767 --> 00:39:32,031 her petticoats and her crinolines, 480 00:39:32,169 --> 00:39:37,505 and she would use those to hide her rifles and her guns 481 00:39:37,641 --> 00:39:39,233 and her theadolite and her compasses, 482 00:39:39,377 --> 00:39:44,280 because she did not want the Turks to know what she was doing in the desert. 483 00:39:49,353 --> 00:39:50,684 With her imperious manner, 484 00:39:50,821 --> 00:39:52,880 Gertrude had a way of ensuring an audience 485 00:39:53,023 --> 00:39:55,992 with even the most elusive sheiks. 486 00:39:58,529 --> 00:40:03,865 She impressed them with her command of Arabic and her passion for politics. 487 00:40:10,541 --> 00:40:12,975 When she would present herself to a sheik 488 00:40:13,110 --> 00:40:16,307 or to a tribal leader or to a dignitary, 489 00:40:16,447 --> 00:40:17,914 the way that she spoke 490 00:40:18,048 --> 00:40:22,678 and the way that she held herself was of such import 491 00:40:25,623 --> 00:40:31,391 that they saw her not as a woman, but as a figure of authority. 492 00:40:32,363 --> 00:40:38,199 And so her gender was forgotten about. It was completely ignored. 493 00:40:42,406 --> 00:40:46,365 In fact, they saw her as a person with a capital P. 494 00:40:46,510 --> 00:40:50,810 And that was something that Gertrude Bell aspired to 495 00:40:50,948 --> 00:40:54,975 to be seen as a person wherever she went. 496 00:40:59,123 --> 00:41:06,188 I think by paradox, in the Arab world, she was so exotic, 497 00:41:08,833 --> 00:41:13,270 both because she dressed every bit the Victorian 498 00:41:13,404 --> 00:41:16,032 Englishwoman, and because at the same time she spoke Persian, 499 00:41:16,173 --> 00:41:20,439 she spoke Arabic, she could deal with them man to man, 500 00:41:20,578 --> 00:41:23,547 and yet she looked very much the woman 501 00:41:23,681 --> 00:41:28,050 yet not one of theirs, but a foreign, exotic, other woman 502 00:41:28,185 --> 00:41:32,622 made her such a fascinating creature that she gained entry, 503 00:41:32,756 --> 00:41:38,888 paradoxically, into their world as a man from Britain could not have done. 504 00:41:40,030 --> 00:41:43,090 To Bell it was clear that the power of the Ottoman Turks 505 00:41:43,234 --> 00:41:45,930 was fading in the Middle East. 506 00:41:46,504 --> 00:41:50,201 To be replaced, she believed, by British influence. 507 00:41:54,712 --> 00:41:59,012 Some Arab sheiks favored the British, others the Turks. 508 00:41:59,917 --> 00:42:05,480 On this trip in 1913, tensions were too high even for Gertrude. 509 00:42:06,323 --> 00:42:10,726 She headed home and wrote up her impressions for the British government. 510 00:42:12,129 --> 00:42:16,498 Just a few months later, World War I broke out. 511 00:42:16,634 --> 00:42:19,569 And the report that she had written 512 00:42:22,039 --> 00:42:24,940 became vital to the British. 513 00:42:26,810 --> 00:42:29,335 She was the person who knew the balances of powers, 514 00:42:29,480 --> 00:42:32,244 the shifting alliances. 515 00:42:32,983 --> 00:42:36,248 She had contacts which were truly awesome in the desert, 516 00:42:36,387 --> 00:42:39,288 and the respect of the chieftains. 517 00:42:40,257 --> 00:42:43,055 Gertrude's report reflected her keen understanding 518 00:42:43,193 --> 00:42:46,185 of the opportunity in the Middle East. 519 00:42:46,897 --> 00:42:48,091 The time had come, she wrote, 520 00:42:48,232 --> 00:42:51,895 to organize the Arabs in a revolt against the Turks. 521 00:42:53,003 --> 00:42:55,995 In wartime, the strategy was irresistible 522 00:42:56,140 --> 00:43:00,839 as the Ottoman Turks had sided with the Germans against the British. 523 00:43:05,482 --> 00:43:09,282 The same British who had forbade her to go into the desert, 524 00:43:09,420 --> 00:43:16,326 turned around and drafted her as a spy for the British in the Middle East. 525 00:43:18,329 --> 00:43:22,026 Working closely beside Gertrude in intelligence in the Cairo bureau 526 00:43:22,166 --> 00:43:26,865 were several ex archeologists, including T. E. Lawrence, 527 00:43:28,372 --> 00:43:31,466 a. K.a., Lawrence of Arabia. 528 00:43:33,243 --> 00:43:37,509 Gertrude Bell was actually the brains behind T. E. Lawrence. 529 00:43:38,616 --> 00:43:41,084 He had actually never been to Arabia. 530 00:43:41,218 --> 00:43:43,209 It was Gertrude Bell who had been there, 531 00:43:43,354 --> 00:43:46,323 and so she was the one who was able to tell Lawrence 532 00:43:46,457 --> 00:43:51,656 which sheiks he should contact, and who was reliable and who was not. 533 00:43:52,563 --> 00:43:56,727 She was as essential or more so than Lawrence, I think, 534 00:43:56,867 --> 00:44:01,361 in convincing Arab leaders to side with the British. 535 00:44:02,139 --> 00:44:04,107 She had their trust in a way that 536 00:44:04,241 --> 00:44:08,940 I think no Western man could quite accomplish. 537 00:44:10,547 --> 00:44:11,104 But, of course, 538 00:44:11,248 --> 00:44:13,716 when it came time to go off to the desert 539 00:44:13,851 --> 00:44:16,786 and become the liaison with the Arabs, 540 00:44:16,920 --> 00:44:19,480 the British said, Lawrence is going, 541 00:44:19,623 --> 00:44:21,648 and when Gertrude Bell said, I want to go, 542 00:44:21,792 --> 00:44:26,354 they said, Don't be ridiculous; it is much too dangerous for a woman. 543 00:44:26,497 --> 00:44:29,989 Now, of course, she was the one who had been there originally. 544 00:44:30,134 --> 00:44:34,298 But the British being the British, that was their attitude, 545 00:44:34,438 --> 00:44:36,235 and they would not let her go. 546 00:44:38,976 --> 00:44:44,073 Gertrude remained desk bound, feeding information to Lawrence at the front. 547 00:44:45,516 --> 00:44:48,644 She knew every important oasis in the Arabian desert, 548 00:44:48,786 --> 00:44:53,120 every Arab sheik who might be persuaded to rise against the Turks. 549 00:44:58,195 --> 00:45:00,925 Slowly, the tide of the war turned. 550 00:45:03,333 --> 00:45:05,301 In January of 1917, 551 00:45:05,436 --> 00:45:09,668 Lawrence led his famous charge against Ottoman forces in Aqaba, 552 00:45:10,541 --> 00:45:13,567 one of the finest moments of the Arab revolt. 553 00:45:14,478 --> 00:45:18,073 Two months later, British forces occupied Baghdad. 554 00:45:18,215 --> 00:45:21,343 Gertrude Bell wasn't far behind. 555 00:45:21,919 --> 00:45:24,752 When the Armistice came in January 1918, 556 00:45:24,888 --> 00:45:28,289 she was exactly where she wanted to be. 557 00:45:30,461 --> 00:45:36,195 There was always this sense of ownership in her attitude towards Iraq. 558 00:45:36,333 --> 00:45:39,928 And she loved it in a very paternalistic way, 559 00:45:40,070 --> 00:45:45,064 with this attitude that she, herself, could control the area 560 00:45:45,209 --> 00:45:50,112 that she could decide what was going to happen to it. 561 00:45:50,247 --> 00:45:52,442 There was one letter that Gertrude Bell wrote home 562 00:45:52,583 --> 00:45:57,418 where she said, "I feel like God in his creation." 563 00:45:58,222 --> 00:46:03,956 She was so aware that the British were creating countries, 564 00:46:04,094 --> 00:46:06,790 Puppet states, if you will, for the British. 565 00:46:06,930 --> 00:46:09,330 But starting from scratch. 566 00:46:10,033 --> 00:46:12,297 There had never been a state of Iraq before. 567 00:46:12,436 --> 00:46:15,030 There had never been any such thing. 568 00:46:16,173 --> 00:46:19,631 In this great expanse of empty desert and disparate tribes, 569 00:46:19,777 --> 00:46:24,237 Gertrude Bell drew the lines, creating the modern state of Iraq. 570 00:46:25,415 --> 00:46:28,213 Defining the contours of the contemporary Middle East, 571 00:46:28,352 --> 00:46:30,980 still in contention today. 572 00:46:33,223 --> 00:46:36,351 In 1919, nationalism seethed 573 00:46:36,493 --> 00:46:40,554 as the British and French divided the area into protectorates. 574 00:46:41,265 --> 00:46:45,031 At first, Gertrude believed that the British should govern Iraq. 575 00:46:45,169 --> 00:46:48,104 But T. E. Lawrence helped change her mind. 576 00:46:49,807 --> 00:46:52,901 He argued that the throne belonged to this man, Faisal, 577 00:46:53,043 --> 00:46:56,137 the charismatic leader of the Arab revolt. 578 00:46:58,582 --> 00:47:01,016 At a conference in Cairo in 1921, 579 00:47:01,151 --> 00:47:05,554 Gertrude Bell took her place between Lawrence and Winston Churchill. 580 00:47:08,492 --> 00:47:11,120 There were these famous pictures of her at conferences 581 00:47:11,261 --> 00:47:13,729 where she is the only woman. 582 00:47:15,899 --> 00:47:22,031 This must have been incredibly hard, and she carried it off. 583 00:47:23,974 --> 00:47:27,842 She was a woman in a world dominated by men. 584 00:47:29,613 --> 00:47:33,014 Surprisingly, Gertrude Bell preferred it that way. 585 00:47:35,419 --> 00:47:40,015 Back in England, she had campaigned against a woman's right to vote. 586 00:47:42,059 --> 00:47:43,026 In her gut, 587 00:47:43,160 --> 00:47:47,722 she really never did believe that women were the equal of men. 588 00:47:48,532 --> 00:47:51,524 She believed that she was intellectually, 589 00:47:51,668 --> 00:47:54,330 but of course, if all women were treated as the equal of men, 590 00:47:54,471 --> 00:47:56,530 that would also have made her less special. 591 00:47:56,673 --> 00:47:58,197 It would have made her just another woman 592 00:47:58,342 --> 00:48:01,743 who happened to be an extraordinary one, but just another woman. 593 00:48:05,082 --> 00:48:10,520 Now, this extraordinary woman prepared for the coronation of ing Faisal. 594 00:48:15,692 --> 00:48:18,627 She made sure he couldn't do without her, 595 00:48:18,762 --> 00:48:23,222 hosting a series of teas and dinners for him in the garden of her home. 596 00:48:24,167 --> 00:48:27,466 These were some of the best years of Gertrude Bell's life. 597 00:48:27,604 --> 00:48:31,301 She was very close to the ing, ing Faisal. 598 00:48:31,441 --> 00:48:34,899 In fact, she had an almost school girl crush on him, 599 00:48:35,045 --> 00:48:37,946 and he was very fond of her. 600 00:48:38,081 --> 00:48:40,379 And everybody relied on her, 601 00:48:40,517 --> 00:48:46,012 so she had a great sense of importance, of power. 602 00:48:46,823 --> 00:48:49,621 On pleasant afternoons, Gertrude would take Faisal 603 00:48:49,760 --> 00:48:52,593 to view the ancient ruins in the desert. 604 00:48:53,931 --> 00:48:58,061 "We shall make Iraq as great as its past," she promised the new king. 605 00:49:02,339 --> 00:49:07,675 But it wasn't long before Faisal had his own ideas, his own set of advisors. 606 00:49:10,047 --> 00:49:11,844 To occupy Gertrude's time, 607 00:49:11,982 --> 00:49:16,043 he appointed her honorary director of antiquities. 608 00:49:16,653 --> 00:49:18,211 She took the position seriously, 609 00:49:18,355 --> 00:49:20,550 insisting that her British and American colleagues 610 00:49:20,691 --> 00:49:24,252 turn over 50 percent of the treasures they found in Iraq 611 00:49:24,394 --> 00:49:27,727 to form the nucleus of a new museum in Baghdad. 612 00:49:30,467 --> 00:49:34,836 Gertrude Bell wrote some of the first laws protecting the rights of a country 613 00:49:34,972 --> 00:49:37,736 to safeguard its ancient treasures. 614 00:49:40,777 --> 00:49:44,474 Yet her letters home were sounding plaintive. 615 00:49:45,816 --> 00:49:50,082 Except for the museum, I'm not enjoying life at all. 616 00:49:52,622 --> 00:49:55,056 The role of the British in Iraq was waning, 617 00:49:55,192 --> 00:49:57,683 and with it, Gertrude's power. 618 00:49:58,996 --> 00:50:00,361 As time went by, 619 00:50:00,497 --> 00:50:03,432 there were no more dinner parties in her garden. 620 00:50:09,072 --> 00:50:12,701 And so she found herself there more and more on her own, 621 00:50:12,843 --> 00:50:15,277 with less and less to do. 622 00:50:15,412 --> 00:50:18,176 She became sadder and sadder, 623 00:50:19,950 --> 00:50:25,911 until she felt as if a great black cloud had come over her. 624 00:50:26,757 --> 00:50:30,693 She felt that there was nothing left for her in Baghdad, 625 00:50:31,428 --> 00:50:34,625 and certainly nothing left for her in England. 626 00:50:37,034 --> 00:50:41,403 One has the sharp sense of being near the end of things, 627 00:50:41,972 --> 00:50:47,706 with no certainty as to what, if anything, one will do next. 628 00:50:48,745 --> 00:50:52,545 It is a very lonely business living here now. 629 00:50:55,886 --> 00:50:59,686 In her mind she felt that she had failed in her lifelong quest 630 00:50:59,823 --> 00:51:02,724 to be recognized as a person. 631 00:51:04,661 --> 00:51:07,960 She was tired, ill, and alone. 632 00:51:08,098 --> 00:51:12,000 Haunted by doubts about the choices she had made. 633 00:51:13,537 --> 00:51:18,975 On July 11, 1926, three days before her 58th birthday, 634 00:51:19,109 --> 00:51:24,206 Gertrude Bell took an overdose of sleeping pills and died. 635 00:51:27,984 --> 00:51:31,784 She was buried the next day in a full military funeral 636 00:51:33,490 --> 00:51:35,958 attended by thousands of people. 637 00:51:37,494 --> 00:51:40,156 One of her colleagues paid tribute: 638 00:51:42,265 --> 00:51:48,033 Hers was the brightest spirit that shone upon our labors in the East. 639 00:51:52,042 --> 00:51:54,977 Gertrude's dream of the East had sustained her 640 00:51:55,112 --> 00:51:59,310 through a life of public achievement and personal heartache. 641 00:52:01,451 --> 00:52:03,043 She may have died doubting it, 642 00:52:03,186 --> 00:52:07,452 but to history she was a person at last.