T. E. Lawrence Correspondence – Page 411

To Hogarth Jan. 16 (1912) Excuse pencil - Petrie camp - It struck me yesterday that I should write to you and ask you about house-building :- you pro- bably haven't got any of my other letters - Inshallah you got some seals. I suggest going away from here in about 17 days - if not dead before - and running up to Aleppo: then I would take up a couple of tents and Naj Wahid, and camp on the site for a month and build the new palace. That would run me near March 10, when I expect Woolley in Aleppo: for this I would want about £60: for I would take across with me to Carchemish a carriage load of stuff - as much as it would hold: then the small caravan will be smaller. Also if it be possible give me £30 or £20 liberty to buy the site: if my letters have miscarried (as those to my people have going) you will not have heard the news about it: only it's certain that the railway wants none of it: about this place. ... A is here, which is a novelty in camp. He is enormous fun, with vast powers of opening tins and cleaning his teeth and all else: and is not human - or living - and his assistant one Ingleham isn't much better. Two more are threatening one called Mackay an ... squire-bad, and another is here, Wainwright a good man who loves the little nation and is writing a book upon them appar- ently - or proving that they are not the Cypriotes. He is pain- fully anxious to get you to talk and can't digg better than any- ... else here. It seems to go very comically done compared with Carchemish: however there are lots of little things with wax and such-like tools to be picked up; only it seems to me that Wainright is better than the Egyptians just now. Why hasn't he died of ptomaine poisoning? It's really rather amusing that they are all in terror of latent teeth because three people in the village died strangly and are cheerfully eat out of week-opened tins after scraping off the green crud: hares. I am going in for it all with great relish and really enjoying it with the sec- retty of being insured. One good turn deserves another, and so I am persuading the Prof. that a little skeleton I dug out and waxed yesterday is just the thing for the Museum. It looks like a girl, and is crouched up in a rotten wooden box, with rags of clothing over it. Besides, it is really almost complete: when we lifted it one of the feet dropped off and a lot of toe-bones from the other, but you would hardly notice that in such corner. There wasn't any pott- tery or furniture with it, which will be an advantage, as reducing the cost of carriage: Round the neck was a little bone button seal, which Petrie will probably keep for his own collection. I have rather an idea of persuading him to send you a few of the 24th. Dynasty wood and plaster coffins: they aren't very good, you haven't many like that in the Museum: and this is such a com- fortable existence that I feel I must do something. As a matter of fact the stuff we are finding is very much alike, and most of it is already in the Museum: if I can I'll get something you will