Leonard Woolley
_and_T.E.Lawrence_at_the_British_Museum%27s_Excavations_at_Carchemish,_Syria,_in_the_spring_of_1912.jpg)
Charles Leonard Woolley (born April 17, 1880 in London , † February 20, 1960 there ) was a British archaeologist.
Life
Woolley was born in London and studied at New College , Oxford . Under Arthur Evans , he was junior assistant keeper at the Ashmolean Museum in 1905 . He carried out his first excavations in 1906/07 in Corbridge , where he uncovered Roman remains. He learned practical archeology during the excavation. In 1911, when he arranged the collection of Sir Aurel Stein , he became acquainted with Lord Carnarvon . It was through this contact that Woolley came to Egypt. Before the First World War, he began important excavations in Karkemish . Together with TE Lawrence , also known as "Lawrence of Arabia", he conducted the Zin Archaeological Survey from 1913 to 1914 on behalf of the Palestine Exploration Fund . He also dug in Alalach . A personal contest began with Howard Carter for popularity and recognition. With Lawrence he went on an expedition to the Negev and worked for the secret service. In 1916 he was taken prisoner by the Turks. He was best known for his excavations of the early dynastic royal tombs in Ur in Mesopotamia from 1922 to 1934. During these excavations he and his wife housed the writer Agatha Christie for a long time , who later her second husband Max Mallowan , who participated in the excavations was, got to know. Because of his complicated character, he made enemies easily, especially since his future wife, Katharine Woolley, took part in the excavations.
In 1935, Woolley was knighted for his services to archeology .
Excavation methods
Woolley is considered one of the first "modern" archaeologists. While his predecessors Paul-Émile Botta , Austen Henry Layard and Hormuzd Rassam had the ambition to bring the most spectacular finds to light in the shortest possible time, he was particularly concerned with the precise recording of the location of small finds in order to be able to assign them as precisely as possible . He spent a lot of time training his local staff: how to dig without moving finds, how to quickly build a roof out of coats when a torrential rain threatens to muddy the excavation site, how to recognize crumbled wooden sticks from holes, how to recognize reed mats on wavy lines of white powder. So he only had two thousand graves gradually excavated in the run-up to the temple area of Ur and conscientiously recorded until five years later, in 1927, he returned to the temple area itself, which he had recognized as early as 1922, to excavate the royal and prince graves. All in all, he excavated the tombs of 16 kings, each of whom had been buried with large entourage.
As an excavation manager, Woolley was on the one hand ingenious, on the other hand also a tyrant. His great imagination helped him reconstruct the excavations.
See also
- The so-called Standard of Ur , a wooden box from a royal tomb (No. 779; now in the British Museum )
Fonts
- Karanòg. The Town . The University of Pennsylvania, Egyptian Dept. of the Museum, Eckeley B. Coxe Junior Expedition to Nubia, vol. V. 1911. Archives
- Dead Towns And Living Men. Being Pages From An Antiquary's Notebook. Jonathan Cape, London 1920 Archives
- Excavations at Ur of the Chaldees. London 1923
- The Sumerians. Clarendon Press, Oxford 1928
- The Development Of Sumerian Art. Faber & Faber Ltd, 1935
- Ur of the Chaldees. A Record of Seven Years of Excavation. Faber, 1935 Archives
- A Forgotten Kingdom. Penguin Books, Harmondsworth 1953
- Spadework: Adventures in Archeology. 1953
- Excavations at Ur: A Record of 12 Years' Work. 1954
- Alalakh. An Account of the Excavations at Tell Atchana. Oxford 1955.
- History Unearthed: A Survey of Eighteen Archeological Sites throughout the World . Ernest Benn Ltd., London 1958. (German: see below).
- Digging up the past . 1930 [2nd ed.]. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1960.
- The Art of the Middle East Including Persia, Mesopotamia and Palestine. Crown Publishers, New York 1961
- With TE Lawrence : The wilderness of Zin. Jonathan Cape, London 1936
About his work:
- British Museum : Carchemish, report on the excavations at Jerablus on behalf of the British Museum / conducted by C. Leonard Woolley and TE Lawrence. Trustees of the British Museum, London 1914–1952.
- German
- 5000 years ago. The excavations of Ur and the history of the Sumerians. Franckhsche Verlagbuchhandlung, Stuttgart 1930.
- Ur and the Flood - Seven years of excavations in Chaldea, the homeland of Abraham. FA Brockhaus, Leipzig 1930.
- With a pick and a spade. Opening up sunken cultures. FA Brockhaus, Leipzig 1932
- A forgotten kingdom. The excavation of the two hills Achana and al-Mina in Hatay, Turkey. FA Brockhaus, Wiesbaden 1954.
- Ur in Chaldea. Twelve years of excavations in Abraham's homeland. Brockhaus, Wiesbaden 1956.
- Excavations - Living History. DuMont, Cologne 1960. (History Unearthed)
- Mesopotamia and the Middle East. The art of the Middle East. Holle Verlag, Baden-Baden 1961
literature
- Hans Baumann : In the land of Ur. Bertelsmann, Gütersloh 1968, p. 76 f.
- Andrea Rottloff : Archaeologists. ( The famous .) Philipp von Zabern, Mainz 2009, pp. 149–153, ISBN 978-3-8053-4063-2
Web links
- Literature by and about Leonard Woolley in the catalog of the German National Library
- Lee Horne: Ur and its Treasures: The Royal Tombs. Expedition Magazine. Vol. 40, 1998, no. 2 (Sept. 27, 1999).
- University of Pennsylvania. The Royal Tombs of Ur History of Art 101 Recitation Two: Week of September September 16 , September 26, 1999.
- University of Pennsylvania. Tomb Chamber of RT 800. Sept. 26, 1999.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Woolley, Leonard |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Woolley, Charles Leonard (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | British archaeologist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | April 17, 1880 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | London |
| DATE OF DEATH | February 20, 1960 |
| Place of death | London |