Excavating at Karkemish, 1912-1920

Sarah Griswold, New York University

"Of all the civilizations that claim hegemony in Syria, those of the Hittites, little known even just twenty years ago, are affirmed today as one of the most vigorous and the most powerful." So announced the French archaeologist Georges Contenau in the newly inaugurated archaeology journal, Syria, in 1920. [1] Though the Frenchman's observations perhaps seemed esoteric, they carried important political implications. The French government, with its designs on territory in the Middle East, funded Syria, and the journal arguably became a conduit of ancient justifications for contemporary border making. The battle to interpret Hittite heritage became critical to multiple nations after World War I.

Contenau was reviewing the Report on the excavations at Djerabis on behalf of the British Museum, first published back in 1914. The rising stars Leonard Woolley and T.E. Lawrence featured prominently in the Report, having served respectively as excavation director and assistant. Though the two had worked at Djerabis from 1912-1914 without much fanfare, by 1920 things had begun to change. Hittites were increasingly drawing the attention of scholars from France, Britain, and the United States. Woolley had also just published a popular account of the excavations, Dead Towns and Living Men (much to the displeasure of Lawrence, who derided the book to friends as "vulgar" and a "circus" of falsities).

Reviving an ancient civilization often depended on the excavation of a principal site, one that could reveal layers of life and summon thousands of pounds, or francs, to support the costly venture. For the ancient Hittites, this site became Karkemish, located near the modern town of Jarabulus in what was then the Ottoman province of Aleppo [2]. Karkemish was excavated by the British Museum from the 1870s. Between 1912 and 1914, Woolley and Lawrence carried out five campaigns. Karkemish lay at a strategic crossroads and became famous in archaeological circles for revealing Hittite defense structures as well as palaces and temples. Exquisite bas-reliefs in basalt were uncovered by the hundreds of workers who carried out the backbreaking world of clearing and carrying. Woolley and Lawrence can be seen in this photograph showing off the dig's results. A worker stands behind them, perhaps readying another relief for its photographic moment in the sun.

With the advent of World War I, digging at Karkemish stopped. Lawrence's wartime activities are well known, Woolley's less so. He became a British captain and was stationed in Egypt, and then in Syria from 1919 during the joint Anglo-French Occupation. He did not bring back his former assistant to Syria with him (Lawrence was busy at work on his own projects) and initially he refrained from excavating at Karkemish, now in contested borderlands. But the French were wary of his return all the same, as the missive below clearly shows.  

In the telegram above (July 1919), the chief French diplomat in Beirut, François Georges-Picot, notified officials in Paris that change was afoot in the region's archaeological terrain. He first voiced concern of an imminent British monopoly on excavations and exportation in the occupied territory (to the benefit of the British Museum). He then discussed Woolley. Mistakenly calling Woolley "Captain Booller," Picot warned that the British archaeologist-cum-captain was lurking around the environs of Antioch, "seeking to buy not only already discovered antique pieces but also land on which he thinks interesting excavations might take place." [3] 

When Woolley was subsequently released from British military duty, he returned to Karkemish in late 1919. Karkemish was in the French zone of the Occupied Enemy Territory, but Picot's distress about Woolley likely continued. After all, though the excavation of the Hittite city by a British citizen occurred ostensibly in the name of universal science, the French wanted such knowledge to be revealed by French scholars. And Karkemish was an especially symbolic site for demonstrating French power in an area claimed by various nationalist projects.

Why didn't the French say no to Woolley? The answer is simple. Technically, the French had to allow Woolley back to Karkemish. While the French and British agreed to forbid any new archaeological excavations in the occupied territory until a peace agreement was signed with Turkish leaders, excavations begun before the Great War were allowed to recommence. Woolley was thus within his rights to come back. He agreed to give all his finds not to the British Museum sponsoring the dig but to the disposition of the eventual government to emerge in the territory.

For all of the diplomatic maneuverings that enabled him to dig, Woolley did not stay long. When hostilities between French and Turkish forces broke out in 1920, not only were excavations again suspended but Karkemish became a site of military operations. The French troops dug trenches on the site itself and turned their guns from behind the ancient Hittite battlements on Turkish soldiers. [4] A site of interest for its links to the ancient past became a site of strategic defense in the present, an ironic twist given the fact that the discovery of ancient Hittite defense structures at Karkemish had prompted Contenau to declare Hittite hegemony in Syria in the first place. The fight for ownership of the Hittites now turned militarily-territorially real, and Karkemish stood as a most coveted possession.

Source:

[1] Contenau, "Review of Carcemish, report on the excavations at Djerablis on behalf of the British Museum, conducted by C. Leonard Woolley and T.E. Lawrence, London: British Museum, 1914," in Syria, v. 1 (1920): 165.

[2] On the topographical map, Karkemish can be found on the top left, located on the Euphrates. The ancient site's present day straddling of the Turkish-Syrian border is indicated with a faint political line.

[3] Telegram from François Georges-Picot to French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 4 July 1919. Archives of the Ministère des Affaires Etrangères, 75CPCOM/Levant Series, Box 106.

[4] Nicolò Marchetti, "Karkemish on the Euphrates: Excavating a City's History," in Near Eastern Archaeology, v. 75 (September 2012): 132-147 (132).

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