In 1914 with the outbreak of war Bell joined the Red Cross and worked in Boulogne, France. In 1915 she was sent back to London to reorganize Red Cross headquarters. In the same year when the Arabs rebelled against Turkish rule Bell was drafted into the War Office’s Arab Intelligence Bureau and moved to Cairo. Her task was to collect and summarize information about the Bedouin tribes and sheikhs of northern Arabia whose rebellion against Turkey was supported by the British. She was later attached to the military intelligence staff of the Mesopotamian Expeditionary Force and became political officer and Oriental secretary to Sir Percy Cox. Her special knowledge of Arab politics, her prewar friendships with Arab leaders, and her linguistic abilities were valuable to successful liaisons between the British and the rebelling desert tribes. Bell moved to Baghdad in 1917, after its capture, and she continued to act as an adviser in a civil capacity, as chief political officer, completing an administrative review of mesopotamia in 1920. She and Sir Percy Cox, then high commissioner in Mesopotamia, strongly supported the election of Saud Emir Feisal and the creation of a new Arab government in Iraq.

While she continued to work as political secretary, Bell was made Iraq’s Director of Antiquities, responsible for all archaeological excavations and for establishing an antiquities service and a national museum at Baghdad. The museum was inaugurated in 1923 and moved into its new building in 1926. Bell was looking for a permanent director of antiquities so that she could return to England after her ten years of service in Iraq, when she died in Baghdad. She was buried in the English cemetery in Baghdad and in 1927, at the suggestion of King Feisal, a wing of the Baghdad Museum was named for her.

Tim Murray

References

Winstone, H.W.V. 1978. Gertrude Bell. London: Cape.

Belzoni, Giovanni Battista

(1778–1823)

When Napoleon invaded Egypt he took with him dozens of scholars and scientists to explore and record its ancient monuments. The twenty-four volume Description d’Egypt published in 1809 introduced Europe to ancient Egyptian civilization, provoking enormous interest both popular and museological, which led to the development of a lucrative market for Egyptian antiquities. Napoleon’s army and his agent Drovetti had already plundered many antiquities when the British consul-general in Cairo, the former portrait painter Henry Salt, hired Giovanni Belzoni to ensure Britain’s share. The Italian Belzoni had been a strong man in a circus before he began to collect antiquities on Salt’s behalf, and his collecting techniques reflected this background. There was nothing scientific or careful about his removal of artifacts. Indeed it was his strength and his abilities to use levers and pulleys that enabled Belzoni to transport the monumental granite head of Rameses II from Thebes, and Rameses III’s sarcophagus from the Valley of the Kings, back to England. In October 1817 Belzoni discovered the tomb of Seti I, the most richly decorated of all Egyptian royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings. Because it could not be transported as a whole Belzoni spent a great deal of time and effort recording the details of the wall paintings of the tomb for posterity.

Belzoni returned to England in 1819 and was taken up by London society. In 1821 he opened the Egyptian Hall in the british museum. He died in Benin in West Africa in 1823 on an expedition to find the source of the River Niger.