Miss. Gertrude Lowthian Bell

Abstract

ARCHÆOLOGICAL studies in the Near East have suffered a great, indeed an almost irreparable, loss by the death of Miss Gertrude Lowthian Bell, which took place at Baghdad on July 11, at the age of fifty-seven years. The eldest daughter of Sir Hugh Bell, she was educated at Queen's College, London, and at the University of Oxford, where she took a first class in the History Schools. She then went to Teheran and later began her travels in Arab countries, travels in which—a remarkable achievement for a woman—she crossed the deserts of Arabia, thereby winning for herself the gold medal of the Royal Geographical Society, and visited the Shammar stronghold at Hayil, to which no European had penetrated for twenty years. Here a detention, virtually as a prisoner, gave her a remarkable insight into Arab customs, the Arab temperament, and an acquaintance with Ibn Saud, which were to prove later of the greatest value to Great Britain. It was very largely this knowledge of Arab character which was responsible for her successful achievement as a political officer at Baghdad during the War in the Political Department of the Government of India, which was then in charge of Mesopotamian affairs.