Leonard Woolley

Leonard Woolley
Leonard Woolley (right) and T. E. Lawrence at the British Museum's Excavations at Carchemish, Syria, in the spring of 1913
Born	17 April 1880 Southwold Road Upper Clapton London Borough of Hackney
Died	20 February 1960
Fields	archaeology
Known for	excavations at Ur in Mesopotamia.

Sir Charles Leonard Woolley (17 April 1880 – 20 February 1960) was a British archaeologist best known for his excavations at Ur in Mesopotamia. He is considered to have been one of the first "modern" archaeologists, and was knighted in 1935 for his contributions to the discipline of archaeology.

Life

Leonard Woolley was the son of a clergyman and was brother to Geoffrey Harold Woolley and George Cathcart Woolley. He was born at 13 Southwold Road, Upper Clapton, in the modern London Borough of Hackney^[1] and educated at St John's School, Leatherhead and New College, Oxford. He was interested in excavations from a young age.

Work

In 1905, Woolley became assistant of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Volunteered by Arthur Evans to run the excavations on the Roman site at Corbridge for Francis Haverfield, Woolley began his excavation career there in 1906, later admitting in Spadework that "I had never studied archaeological methods even from books... and I had not any idea how to make a survey or a ground-plan" (Woolley 1953:15). T. E. Lawrence worked with Woolley on the excavation of the Hittite city of Carchemish from 1912 to 1914. His work at Ur (in charge of the joint venture between the British Museum and the University of Pennsylvania) began in 1922, and he made important discoveries in the course of excavating the royal cemeteries there, including the Copper Bull^[2] and the pair of Ram in a Thicket figurines, one of which is in the British Museum and the other in the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Agatha Christie's novel, Murder in Mesopotamia, was inspired by the discovery of the royal tombs. Christie later married Woolley's young assistant, Max Mallowan.

Ur, found in present-day Iraq, was the burial site of what may have been many Sumerian royals. Woolley discovered tombs of great material wealth. Inside these tombs were large paintings (this is not demonstrated in the archaeological record; the strata were highly compressed and wall painting is not demonstrated elsewhere in ancient Sumer) were compressed of ancient Sumerian culture at its zenith, along with gold and silver jewelry, cups and other furnishings. The most extravagant tomb was that of “Queen” Pu-Abi. Amazingly enough, Queen Pu-Abi’s tomb was untouched by looters. Inside the tomb, many well-preserved items were found, including a cylindrical seal bearing her name in Sumerian. Her body was found buried along with those of two attendants, who had presumably been poisoned in order to continue to serve her after death. Woolley was able to reconstruct Pu-Abi's funeral ceremony from objects found in her tomb. Her headdress, cylinder seal and body were formerly on display at the University of Pennsylvania, however they are currently being displayed in the British Museum in London.

In 1936, after his discoveries at Ur, Woolley was interested in finding ties between the ancient Aegean and Mesopotamian civilizations. This led him to the Syrian city of Al Mina. From 1937 to 1939, he was in Tell Atchana.

Local Genesis Flood Theory

Woolley was one of the first archaeologists to propose that the flood described in the Book of Genesis was local after identifying a flood-strata at Ur: "...400 miles long and 100 miles wide; but for the occupants of the valley that was the whole world".^[3]

World War II

His archaeological career was interrupted by the United Kingdom's entry into World War II, and he became part of the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives Section of the Allied armies.

After the war, he returned to Tell Atchana, where he continued to work from 1946 until 1949.

See Also

• Howard Carter
• Flinders Petrie
• Arthur Evans
• Heinrich Schliemann

Bibliography

• Dead Towns and Living Men London (1920)
• Ur of the Chaldees (1929)
• Digging Up The Past (1930)
• A Forgotten Kingdom , Penguin Books, (1953)
• Spadework: Adventures in Archaeology (1953)
• Excavations at Ur: A Record of 12 Years’ Work (1954)
• Alalakh, An Account of the Excavations at Tell , Oxford, (1955)
• The Ancient Near Eastern World, Oxford, (2005)

Further Reading

• Winstone, H. V. F. (1990). Woolley of Ur. London: Secker and Warburg.

Notes

1. ^ Sir Leonard Woolley (Historic plaque - 13 Southwold Road, E5) (LB Hackney} accessed 19 August 2008
2. ^ Copper figure of a bull, British Museum, accessed July 2010
3. ^ Ur of the Chaldees, Leonard Woolley, Ernest Benn Limited, 1929, p. 31.

External links

• PBS (WNET, New York): "The Rape of Europa." November 24, 2008.

Persondata
Name	Woolley, Leonard
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	17 April 1880
Place of birth	Southwold Road Upper Clapton London Borough of Hackney
Date of death	20 February 1960
Place of death