Archaeological crime
An alternative ‘dark side’ of archaeology can be seen in the ways in which archaeologists have been represented in crime fiction. Since its publication in 1936, Agatha Christie’s Murder in Mesopotamia has been reissued countless times, in both hardback and paperback. Various cover illustrations for the book – including those of UK publishers Pan and Fontana and the American paperback publishers Dell – reveal symbolic representations of archaeology: skeletons, pots, a dig, the dig house, the landscape, the exotic East. The original dust jacket for the 1936 first edition, featuring a drawing by archaeological architect Robin Macartney, further emphasised the ‘authenticity’ of the work through Christie’s connections to archaeology as Max Mallowan’s wife.68 In his memoirs Max Mallowan estimated her readership at ‘2,000 million’ people; the many cheap editions of her work produced facilitated this extensive readership.69 Considering her archaeological mystery novels as very simple introductions to the field and projections of archaeological experience makes her role as a populariser of archaeology highly significant.70 In this volume Murder in Mesopotamia and They Came to Baghdad will be analysed as spadework scripts.
Christie was born in Torquay, Devon in 1890.71 Her Belgian refugee protagonist Hercule Poirot made his premier in The Mysterious Affair at Styles, published by John Lane/Bodley Head in 1920. Four years later one of the stories featuring Poirot was the first in which Christie employed an overtly archaeological narrative. ‘The Adventure of the Egyptian Tomb’ takes place as Howard Carter’s excavations of Tutankhamun are unfolding and explores, among other things, the value of curses as a cover-up for murder. The relative of a supposed victim engages Poirot to go to Egypt and prevent the same fate befalling her son.
In 1928 Christie went to Iraq. It was an escape: her first marriage had ended in divorce and she was travelling independently for the first time, via the Orient Express. En route she met the domineering Mrs C., one of what were called the ‘Mem-Sahibs’ – a term originally used for British women in India, but applied in this case to Iraq.72 She made her escape from so-called ‘Mem-Sahib Land’ by planning a trip to see Leonard and Katharine Woolley’s excavations at Ur, which she had read about in London in the Illustrated London News.73 When she returned to Ur for another visit during the 1929/30 season she met Max Mallowan, the Woolleys’ new assistant; the couple married in September 1930. Five years later she began to draft Murder in Mesopotamia, having become by that point familiar with the rhythms and processes of archaeology. Later, when Christie was writing They Came to Baghdad, Mallowan was Professor at the Institute of Archaeology, with a budget for excavations. They were excavating at Nimrud, in the northern part of Iraq, but their seasons began and ended in Baghdad.74
In Murder in Mesopotamia the scene of the action and most of the associated activity is the Expedition House. There are parallels to be drawn between the ‘country house murder’ of the period and the ‘dig house murder’ of Murder in Mesopotamia.75 Christie used floor plans in both her country house mystery, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, and Murder in Mesopotamia. Just as she introduces her readers to some country house ‘types’ in the Mysterious Affair at Styles, in Murder in Mesopotamia she introduces archaeological ‘types’, each with their own distinct role in their own distinct space. Thus Christie’s organised world provides a key to understanding archaeology.
Murder in Mesopotamia’s narrator, Nurse Leatheran, has these ‘types’ explained to her before she embarks for the site of Tell Yarimjah. The team is composed of an architect named Mr Carey, an inscription expert Father Lavigny, the bottle-washing Miss Johnson, Mr and Mrs Mercado, photographer Mr Reiter and assorted young volunteers.76 The Dig Director is Dr Leidner; his wife Louise, like many archaeological wives, joins her husband on site. Unlike many archaeological wives (and unlike Katharine Woolley, on whom she is reputedly based), Louise Leidner seems to have very little to do. Nevertheless readers are informed she has learned Arabic within two seasons and is no intellectual lightweight, as inspection of her room and its small library during the course of the subsequent investigation demonstrates. Murder in Mesopotamia’s dig house is slightly more ordered than the rather haphazard plan of the Ur dig house, but there are obvious similarities to the country house plan, with archaeological elements included.77 Thus the dig house is both familiar and unfamiliar – an example of the ‘familiar strangeness’ of archaeology.78 The sense of isolation is pervasive in the book, with a key component of the classic detective story in the country house style translated to and enhanced by a flavour of the exotic in an archaeological context.
Christie’s 1951 thriller They Came To Baghdad represents archaeology and archaeologists in a different, more nuanced light. Instead of the claustrophobic dig site with its menacing murderer at large, the site of Tell Aswad in They Came to Baghdad is a place of refuge and peace for protagonist Victoria Jones. She leaves dreary London for the bright lights of cosmopolitan capital Baghdad in search of the man she loves. Through a twist of events she finds employment as an undercover agent, assisting the world-weary Mr Dakin to root out the source of an international conspiracy to jettison efforts at global peace. Having been drugged and imprisoned in a small village, Victoria manages to escape her captors. Swathed in an Arab woman’s black Aba (robe), she rests on an ancient mound. Archaeologist Richard Baker arrives on the scene to investigate the mound and discovers Victoria. Believing her to be the English anthropologist due to arrive at the Tell Aswad excavation where he too is expected, Baker takes her to the site. His character reinforces what we now expect of archaeologists – broad cultural knowledge and experience of travel, as well as linguistic skills; Victoria assumes he can easily ‘pass’ as an Arab with his knowledge of Arabic.
Once on site, Victoria becomes ever more captivated by archaeology, using the dig house library to enhance her own knowledge. After a week on site she is capable enough to give a tour of the site to unexpected visitors. Christie describes Victoria’s active imagination conjuring up scenes of ancient life the more she handles ancient objects and understands the layers of history at Tell Aswad. Her developing awareness is a reflection of Christie’s own gradual immersion in archaeology. The narrative explores the roles of photographer and artefact cleaner that she herself took on, and the dawning perception of the processes and practices of the discipline.79
In 1975, under the pseudonym Elizabeth Peters, American Egyptologist Barbara Mertz began publishing her bestselling ‘Amelia Peabody’ series of mystery novels set in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Egypt. Featuring British Egyptologists Amelia Peabody (later Emerson) and Radcliffe Emerson, Peters’ first instalment was Crocodile on the Sandbank. Her intimate knowledge of the history of late nineteenth-century Egyptology, and of scripted spadework, shines through the texts. She illuminates key aspects of the archaeological experience with particular relevance to women: education, independence, artistic skill, marriage bordering on equality with an archaeological partner, even field ‘nursing’ skills – as Amelia is eventually given the title of ‘Sitt Hakim’, or lady doctor.80 In later books other aspects of archaeology emerge – the seasonality of excavation demanding homes in both England and Egypt, hybrid personal identities, familiarity with Egypt and Egyptian customs, linguistic facility, relationships with local communities and, though participating in British expat life in Cairo, having (in the novels) more overt than subtle resistance to a British colonial establishment (not perhaps surprising given Mertz/Peters’ own post-colonial chronology). Two books in particular help to illuminate these themes: Crocodile, which sets the stage for the series, and the exploration of archaeologists in wartime in the twelfth Amelia Peabody mystery, He Shall Thunder in the Sky.
Crocodile opens in 1884 as well-educated, unmarried Amelia, daughter of a wealthy antiquarian, inherits her father’s property on his death and so gains financial independence at the age of 32. She decides to travel to the ancient sites she had heard about from childhood. In Rome, en route to Egypt, she rescues Evelyn Barton-Forbes, a young aristocratic woman whose elopement and subsequent abandonment leads her to contemplate suicide. Engaging Evelyn as her companion, the women set sail for Egypt. Once in Cairo the Philae, a dahabiya, is secured to enjoy a scenic tour up the Nile (Amelia Peabody’s desire for the freedom and independence of the dahabiya echoes Mary Brodrick’s thoughts on the subject). Before embarking, however, a run-in with irascible excavator Radcliffe Emerson at the Boulaq Museum provides the clinching archaeological (and romantic) link. Emerson and his philologically-inclined brother Walter have been granted a permission to excavate at Amarna. With Evelyn being pursued by a particularly ardent suitor, the two women take to the Philae, using the freedom of dahabiya travel to defy convention by stopping at sites on the way up the Nile against favourable currents. When the Philae reaches Amarna, they visit the Emersons on site and are swept up in the adventure of excavation, even as they are being ‘pursued’ by a mysterious and frightening ambulatory mummy who, while terrorising the camp, also murders several people.
As in Thompson’s Mirage, Peters in Crocodile draws on the fundamentals of the archaeological experience to provide the context of the action. Relations between excavators and the villagers they employ are soured when rumours of the mummy’s presence circulate, for example, nearly forcing the Emersons to abandon the site entirely. Amelia Peabody’s growing fascination with ancient Egypt and the adventure of archaeology leads to her abandoning conventional attire and behaviours to adapt to the practicalities of site life: a Rational Dress-inspired divided skirt, too radical to wear in Society (whether in London or Cairo), becomes her work-day suit as she conserves a fragile painted pavement with a solution of water and tapioca. Her working relationship with Emerson develops into a romance and marriage, and she eventually finds her calling in life – as equal partner with Emerson in archaeological expeditions. Though her characteristics have been described as a feminist revision of the ‘New Woman’ and a ‘spoof’, Peabody is in essence a composite of late-Victorian female archaeologists.81
Peters’ ‘Author’s Note’ in Crocodile reveals that she drew on archaeologists’ publications for inspiration. Her comments highlight the long-term commercial and cultural value of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century archaeological memoirs and travel guides. ‘Real-life’ archaeologists such as Gaston Maspero, Francis Llewellyn Griffith, Amelia Edwards and Flinders Petrie appear as characters in the novels or are directly referenced in them, and among other sources Peters used nineteenth-century guides to influence her phrasing and reflect the state of knowledge and its practitioners at the time.82 Emerson is a fictionalised alter-Petrie. He is given some of Petrie’s eccentricities, including his use of pink undergarments in the field and requisition of tombs as camp living quarters, while notable Petrie discoveries, such as the painted pavement at Amarna, are also credited to Emerson.83 In order to emphasise still further the ‘authenticity’ of the Emersons’ adventures as the series progressed and the Emerson family expanded, Peters eventually began to frame the books as, in part, an interpreted archive; she assumed the role of semi-omniscient Editor, on occasion revealing lost or hitherto unpublished manuscripts.84 Thus by the publication of Thunder in 2000 the novels are a compilation of multiple voices/manuscripts – to Peabody’s first person narrative is added ‘Manuscript H’, representing (in third person) the experiences of her son Walter ‘Ramses’ Peabody Emerson and in ‘Letter Collection B’ (in first person), the views of her foster daughter Nefret Forth.85
In Thunder Peters gives us a glimpse into fictionalised wartime Cairo and surrounds, setting the scene for the city’s role in Middle Eastern intelligence operations. The book opens in the city, recently formally annexed by Britain. Twenty-seven-year-old Ramses Emerson has a reputation as a pacifist and Cairo is full of spies. The Emersons, having lived for half the year in Egypt for nearly 30 years, can assume the role of British expats in the city, inhabiting the same social spaces – Shepheard’s Hotel, the Turf Club and the Opera House – when necessary. However, they are most comfortable in the company of their Egyptian colleagues, either in the city’s bazaars in Khan al Khalili (in the ‘Arabic’ quarter of Muski), where they patronise all the best unhygienic cafes, or at their home in a village nearby.86 Their relationship with the Egyptian population has been deemed so valuable that Ramses has been recruited to join the Military Intelligence Department and Emerson offered a position advising the British officials on the latest developments in the Egyptian community.87 With due reference to the role of archaeologists Leonard Woolley, T. E. Lawrence, D. G. Hogarth and Gertrude Bell in the intelligence operations of the Arab Bureau during the First World War, in Thunder Peters-through-Peabody acknowledges archaeology’s value to espionage. In fact Woolley and Lawrence both appear briefly in the novel in relation to intelligence work.88
Ramses, nicknamed after the Egyptian pharaoh because of his ‘swarthiness’ and arrogance, having spent half his life in Egypt even has an alternate Egyptian nickname.89 Through the years he has taken an Egyptian identity so thoroughly that he and his best friend David, grandson of the Emersons’ reis (foreman) Abdullah, can with clever costuming and imitation be mistaken for each other. Further, Ramses can confidently represent himself as Wardani, the Egyptian leader of a nationalist cell in Cairo, to the other Egyptian members of the group. His loyalties and his identities are divided.
It is easy for the majority of the British official class in Cairo to believe that Ramses is a pacifist; they may even be suspicious of his motives concerning Egyptians in relation to British interests. Certainly Ramses knows his way around Cairo’s byzantine back streets, and uses his knowledge to advance the causes he believes are right. Beyond undercover activities the Emersons’ work during the 1914/15 season involves an excavation in the Giza Pyramid fields, allowing Peters (as in the other Peabody books) to offer readers an insight into the details of excavation life and the archaeological network. When a well preserved statue turns up on their dig site, Antiquities Inspector James Quibell and his artist wife Annie Quibell (see Chapter 3), in the same roles held by their real-life counterparts, are invited to see it.90
In 2003 Peters further blurred the lines between her fictional and factual worlds with the publication of nonfiction, quarto-size ‘compendium’ contextualising the nineteenth-century world of Egyptian archaeology and the archaeologists who studied it – the Emersons included. The compendium consists of essays on literature, music, science, travel, chronology, fashion, tourism, religion and society, among other themes. ‘The People of the Journals’ features photographs or illustrations of real and fictional people who appear in the series. As a whole Amelia Peabody’s Egypt draws on the visual imagery and style of the nineteenth-century illustrated newspaper for its aesthetic. Engravings, lithographs and photographic images abound in the book, while ‘Pictorial Essays’ further enhance its vintage look. Though Peters died in 2013 her legacy – and that of the Emersons – lives on in print and digital form.91 The latest Amelia Peabody mystery, The Painted Queen, was posthumously published in 2017.
In 2015 the UK-based role-playing game company Cubicle 7 commissioned a stand-alone novella to accompany their ‘Cthulu Britannica’ series Curse of Nineveh campaign.92The Journal of Reginald Campbell Thompson is premised on a ‘lost’ journal of the eminent archaeologist covering a secret journey to the site in 1919 to reveal the secrets of the hidden temple of Assyrian god Nabu. The novella is an artefact to be used to create other scenarios and identities in the Curse of Nineveh role-play. In The Journal, as in other forms of archaeological fiction, archaeologists are outsiders; they have local contacts, but work within a broadly supportive imperial network. Being in the East – on site – is both exciting and terrifying; the archaeologists make new discoveries even as they unleash and battle forces beyond their control. The novella allows its readers/users to inhabit elements of the archaeological identity, with the characteristics of expedition teams, exotic destinations and espionage as a background to the ‘curse’ theme of the game. With The Journal, through play, new spadework fictions can be scripted.