CHAPTER VII
“Admonitory but Merciful”
At the beginning of 1929, the new year dawned calmly and peacefully for the excavators at Megiddo, with no hint of the clashes that would occur between Jews and Arabs in Jerusalem, Haifa, Hebron, and Safed later that summer, nor of the stock market crash that would rock the United States on Black Tuesday, 29 October.1 Instead, it was the sad condition of the single road that served Megiddo which weighed heavily on Guy and the team that January. Guy mused gloomily that they would “undoubtedly be cut off from time to time during the winter,” and indeed they were.2
By mid-January, the track was impassable because of the heavy rains. In order to get supplies from Afula, they had to ride horses rather than drive.3 Although the excavators—and Breasted, to his credit—had been complaining to the authorities for quite some time, the situation became even more dire when the prospect arose of a visit by the Rockefellers sometime in the spring.4 The excavation team immediately began preparing for the “Great Royal Visit,” as Charles Breasted called it.
Charles arrived a week ahead of the rest of the party, on 1 March, in order to spend time productively with the team and catch up on their activities and needs.5 Then, on the morning of 8 March, several cars pulled up to the dig house. Out of them emerged various Rockefellers and James Henry Breasted, suitably dressed for an excursion.6 The government had come to the rescue just in time, “rushing [the] road through to a state which made the route at least passable,” so that the visitors were able to reach the site. However, they had still spent nearly two hours bumping and lurching over the “unrolled macadam road,” as Breasted described it.7
The Rockefeller interest in Megiddo had been long-standing of course; recall that John D. Rockefeller, Jr., had first promised Breasted funding to excavate at the site nearly a decade earlier and had then come through so that work could begin in 1925. Now, just a few months previously, in December 1928, the Rockefeller Foundation and the General Education Board, two of the philanthropic entities associated with the Rockefellers, had approved a large grant for the construction of a building for the Oriental Institute on the University of Chicago campus, as well as for a ten-year period of research and publication, which included work at Megiddo as well as at numerous other sites in Egypt and the Near East.8
FIG. 21. “Great Royal Visit,” 8 March 1929; left to right: P.L.O. Guy (above), A. Murray Dyer, David Rockefeller, Geoffrey Shipton, Mary “Tod” Clark, Edward DeLoach, Robert Lamon, Abby Rockefeller, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., James Henry Breasted, Harry Parker, unidentified man wearing a fez (courtesy of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago)
The group had spent the previous night at the Royal Hotel in Nazareth, so they were able to arrive at Megiddo by 11:00 a.m. After showing them around the various facilities, Guy and the other team members took their visitors up on the ancient tell. They gathered together for a photograph, clustered tightly between upright stones in one of the stables. Guy stood head and shoulders above the others, on the left. He, Shipton, DeLoach, Lamon, and Parker were all in jacket and tie, each wearing a fedora, though DeLoach also sported a cane and wore his usual bow tie in contrast to all of the others, who wore more somber neckties.
The Rockefellers and Breasted were interspersed among them, including young David Rockefeller and his tutor, Murray Dyer, who stood on the left with a fashionable cap and a cane. In between Shipton and DeLoach was Mary “Tod” Clark (the future Mrs. Nelson Rockefeller), wearing a fur-lined coat and a chic hat. Abby Rockefeller, also with a stylish hat and coat, stood between Lamon and her husband, John D. Rockefeller, Jr. The famous man himself, dressed in an overcoat, warmly grasped the crook of Breasted’s right arm, with a slight smile on his face, while Breasted, quite somber, can be seen clad in his traveling “plus fours” along with the de rigueur (for the day) tweed jacket and tie; both men also have canes, needless to say.
On a side note, and purely as a matter of coincidence, it was on that very same day—8 March 1929—that Rockefeller won a major proxy fight back home and forced out Col. Robert Stewart as chairman of the board for the Standard Oil Company of Indiana, the company that had been cofounded by Rockefeller’s father. (Much later, in the 1980s, it was renamed Amoco and then merged with British Petroleum in the 1990s.) His eldest son, John D. Rockefeller III, then a senior at Princeton, noted in his own diary entry, “Another famous day. The annual meeting of the Board of Directors of the Standard Oil Co. of Indiana met … to elect the Board of Directors. Father had over 50% of the stock in his control by proxy and hence was able to get Stewart out as Chairman of the Board.… Father will be terribly pleased as [it] has meant a lot to him.”9
After descending from the mound and eating an elaborately prepared lunch, the various Rockefellers and Breasted climbed back into their cars, heading for Tiberias and the Sea of Galilee, and on to Beirut, Baalbeck, Damascus, and then a return to Cairo. In the meantime, Charles Breasted headed in the other direction from Megiddo, bound for Haifa and then Cairo, where he eventually reunited with the rest of the party before they all departed for New York a week later.10
In all, it was a whirlwind trip, of which the visit to Megiddo was but a very small part. Although Rockefeller had been very good about writing detailed letters back home throughout the earlier part of the trip, especially from Egypt, he stopped doing so at the end of February, since their group would arrive back home before the letters did. As a result, it is hard to know what he thought of Megiddo, for he made only a very brief entry in his daily diary, under the heading “Fri. Mch. 8”—“Left 9 [a.m.] drove to the Oriental Institute of Chicago house at Megiddo. Mr. Guy in charge. Mr. Noble [sic] the Eng. road engineer and wife also there. Saw excavation of Solomon’s stables. Left after lunch over same new road to highway near Haifa then back through Nazareth and on ¾ hour to Tiberias on Sea of Galilee.”11 That was it; no other comments, notes, or reaction from the man who had been funding the entire enterprise.
He did, however, take the time later that day in Tiberias, after checking in to the Elisabetha Haven of Rest Health Resort, to write a note of thanks to Peter Nobel, the district engineer for the Public Works Department in Haifa, who had been responsible for finishing the road to Megiddo in time for their visit. He also wrote a similar letter to Sir John Chancellor, the high commissioner of British Mandate Palestine, calling the work that Nobel and his staff had done on the new road “little short of miraculous.”12 Breasted, also grateful for the show of hospitality to himself and their major benefactor, sat down right away as well and wrote a nice letter of appreciation to Guy and his wife, Yemima.13
Several days later, Abby sent a telegram to their son Nelson, the future New York governor and vice president of the United States, who was an undergraduate living in Hitchcock Hall at Dartmouth College at the time. She wrote simply: “HOLY LAND MORE BEAUTIFUL THAN DREAMED TRIP DELIGHTFUL STARTING HOME TOMORROW.” To this, written in pencil below her message, Nelson scrawled “any signs of second coming?”14 (We should note that it is not clear whether he actually sent that as a reply.)
After the entourage departed from Megiddo, the team members at the dig all breathed more easily. The visit had gone well. One of the immediate fringe benefits for all concerned was that they had been granted permission to construct a tennis court, which Breasted and the Rockefellers had all agreed was much needed.15 Breasted himself also benefited unexpectedly some months later, when Rockefeller promised him $100,000 for his personal use, as thanks for leading them on the tour of Egypt and the Near East, and as a sign of his “admiration for what you have done and are doing [and] my genuine affection for you.”16
Lamon also benefited from the visit, for he had taken the opportunity to discuss with Charles Breasted how he might finish his undergraduate degree from Chicago. He had put his schooling on hold when he joined the team, and so a plan was now made for him to return to Chicago after the 1929 season, spend some time in residence, and then complete the rest of his remaining credits by correspondence. Cables and letters were exchanged in April, and it was tentatively arranged that Lamon would return to Chicago in mid-June and that a temporary replacement for him would be found, in the person of a young man named Robert W. Hamilton from Oxford, who would be with them for a few weeks until they all left for vacation in July.17
FIG. 22. Megiddo excavation staff and spouses, 22 May 1929; front row, sitting (left to right): Florence and Edward DeLoach (with small dog), Yemima and P.L.O. Guy, Margaret and William Staples; back row, standing (left to right): Harry Parker, Charles Kent, Reis Hamid, Robert Lamon, Olof Lind, Geoffrey Shipton (courtesy of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago)
Hamilton did come to excavate with them from 24 June to 10 July, but his presence went completely unremarked in the letters and other correspondence from that two-week period. Little did they know that, just two years later, he would be appointed chief inspector of antiquities in British Mandate Palestine and would interact continuously with the Megiddo team in that capacity for seven years, from 1931 to 1938. The relationship continued even beyond, in fact, since he then was appointed director of antiquities, a position that he held until 1948 and the end of the British Mandate. Even later, he would become keeper (curator) of the Department of Antiquities at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.18
There was yet another young man, Charles Kent, who arrived at Megiddo soon after the “Royal Visit” and stayed through June 1929. We see him in a photograph of the team members taken on 22 May, but otherwise his time at the dig, like Hamilton’s just after him, went undocumented. He does not seem to be directly related to the well-known biblical scholar Charles Foster Kent, who would have been more than sixty years old at the time, though their names are quite similar.
In April, before the dig season started, Fisher’s long-awaited preliminary excavation report finally appeared. Covering the period from the beginning of work in 1925 through the end of the 1926 season and entitled The Excavation of Armageddon, it was the first publication from the excavation team to appear in print. Discussion about it had begun a year earlier, in February 1928, when Breasted first laid out for Fisher exactly what should be in it and what it should look like, right down to the size of the paper and the typeface that would be used.19 Guy sent around copies when they became available in late April 1929, including three to the director of antiquities in Jerusalem.20 No doubt this gave him motivation to produce his own report, as he told the director, but, as we shall see, that would take two more years, for it did not appear until 1931.
April also brought some very unexpected news from DeLoach: he was engaged to be married to Miss Florence Adele Burnham (Flo, or Sis, as her family called her). She was a young woman from Winnetka, Illinois, who stood five feet five, with brown hair and a winning smile. They had first met through a mutual friend before he left for Megiddo in 1925, but had begun dating only in 1928, while he was home in Chicago recuperating from malaria. She and her entire family—mother, father, and several siblings—had begun traveling the world (for a second time) shortly thereafter, visiting such exotic lands as China, Japan, Korea, Siam (as they called it), India, and Egypt. She and DeLoach had been corresponding throughout the trip, including a postcard that she sent from Cairo in late March.21
The family met up with DeLoach (and possibly Bob Lamon) in Jerusalem at the beginning of April and spent the day touring around. According to a book later published by Flo’s mother, Anita Willets-Burnham (who was an artist, author, and teacher at the Art Institute in Chicago), DeLoach then invited Flo and her older sister Carol-Lou to be his guests at the dig house at Megiddo for a week. Unfortunately, it seems that DeLoach hadn’t asked for permission ahead of time, and so this interruption of the daily routine was not at all appreciated.22 At some point while they were all there, DeLoach proposed to Flo; upon returning to Jerusalem, they broke the news to her parents that they were engaged. They set the date for three weeks thence, which was the soonest that the local (and international) laws allowed.23
As soon as he learned of the engagement, Guy tried to talk the young man out of it but was unsuccessful. The marriage was to take place soon after the beginning of the dig season, which would create all sorts of problems for the dig team if DeLoach then promptly left on a honeymoon. In despair, Guy asked Breasted whether he could authorize a fortnight’s vacation for the couple, only to be told that the matter would be left to his discretion.24
The wedding was held at high noon on 29 April 1929, in St. George’s Cathedral in Jerusalem. She was just nineteen years old; he was twenty-seven. In attendance were Lamon, Staples, and Shipton, with Olof Lind serving as the best man, but Mr. and Mrs. Guy were nowhere to be seen. A photograph taken that day, on the steps of the cathedral, shows the entire Burnham family plus the newlyweds, Lind, and the others from Megiddo. The new couple then left on a quick honeymoon, sailing the Nile, but returned in time to show the rest of the family around Megiddo before bidding them goodbye. Her parents and siblings traveled on to Damascus and beyond, but Flo stayed at Megiddo with her new husband. As her mother later wrote, “It was difficult saying goodbye to Sis; one hates to leave a daughter, when it may be forever, even though she is left in the Holy Land.”25
It must have been a rather difficult and shocking change for Flo as well. Up to that point, she had been happily gallivanting around the world with her family. Even though she had been eager to get married, she was now stuck in the boondocks at Megiddo with a group of people she didn’t even know. Despite all that, she appears to be reasonably happy in a photograph taken of the Megiddo excavation staff and spouses in late May 1929, about three weeks after their wedding and probably very soon after they returned from their honeymoon.
While the two of them were undoubtedly very much in love, their sudden marriage wasn’t met with complete enthusiasm by the senior administration, either back in Chicago or at Megiddo. For one thing, the unexpected marriage upended the careful positioning of the living arrangements in the dig house, because the new couple had to be moved into a larger bedroom and there was now another mouth to feed at every meal.26
Charles Breasted wrote to Guy before the wedding, expressing doubt and concern about DeLoach’s judgment in light of the apparently sudden rush to marriage to someone they erroneously thought he had just met. However, he did also state that DeLoach “is entitled to all the happiness he can get from life and from his job in particular, so long as any move he makes does not interfere with his job but rather serves to contribute to his efficiency.”27
But what is especially interesting is what we do not find after the wedding. There are no more letters or cables exchanged directly between DeLoach and either Charles or James Henry Breasted. The last communication had been a cheery cable full of best wishes to DeLoach in late August 1928, when he was returning to Megiddo after his long convalescence at home,28 but there is now a deafening silence. There are no immediate cables of congratulations to the newlyweds; no discussions of how the room and board costs associated with Flo’s now staying permanently at the dig house would be covered and by whom; no mention at all of the nuptials until a thoughtful letter sent by Breasted’s wife, Frances, on behalf of them both, but not until more than two months after the event, in mid-July. Instead, Guy and Charles Breasted exchanged letters and cables with snide and belittling remarks about the couple, both individually and together. It is clear that DeLoach’s move, which appeared both impromptu and impetuous to them, since they did not know the full backstory of the romance that had begun back in Chicago, did not sit well with these grandees.29
Bear in mind that absolutely nothing negative had ever been said about DeLoach in the years before his sudden marriage; that he had even been appointed assistant field director for a brief period in 1927; and that they were sympathetic when he had to go home to Chicago in 1928 in order to recover from malaria. Now, however, the administration viciously turned on him as well as his new bride, with character assassinations of both. Although Guy did defend him as “a really competent surveyor, and a careful one,” and said that “the plans he produces are accurate and good to look upon,” he also said that, in his opinion, it appeared that DeLoach had made a grievous error and “blotted his copy-book pretty effectively” because of the marriage.30
Charles Breasted was even more brutal in his reply to Guy, damning DeLoach with faint praise and casting aspersions on his character. His statements and accusations are, quite frankly, very surprising, especially since there had not been anything untoward said about DeLoach during the entire four years of his association with the expedition to that point. In fact, back in 1927, when temporarily promoting him, James Henry Breasted had said, “I have great confidence in the character and ability of this young man.”31
Charles Breasted also maligned Flo, despite the fact that he had never met her, including a strange claim that her presence was creating problems in the group. However, there is no indication that anything he said about her was true, and he could not possibly have known whether Flo’s presence was causing problems, because he was in Chicago and she was at Megiddo. In fact, we know from other letters and diaries, such as those of Janet Woolman, who arrived at Megiddo in September and was in daily contact with Flo for the next six months, that Flo actually fit in quite well with the group and with the other spouses who were present that season.32
Charles was, however, gracious enough to say that DeLoach “has displayed qualities of loyalty and faithfulness in the face of real hardship and the most discouraging circumstances” and that, as noted, he was entitled to his happiness.33 Since the marriage subsequently lasted for nearly forty years, until DeLoach’s death in Dallas at age sixty-seven, one year after his retirement from a long and successful career at the Atlantic Refining Company as a geologist/geophysicist, and produced three children and numerous grandchildren, it is clear that he and Flo made the right choice for themselves, regardless of what others may have thought.34
Nevertheless, given the above, and with the advantage of twenty-twenty hindsight, it comes as no surprise that the marriage marked the beginning of the end of DeLoach’s association with Megiddo. By August 1929, he had apparently requested to be transferred to another expedition, though that did not come to fruition. He also wrote to his father saying that he no longer wished to pursue a career in archaeology and was thinking of resigning from the expedition. And indeed, he and Flo left for America within the year, in March 1930, as we shall soon see.35
In mid-July, the team temporarily stopped work at the site. Everyone took a timely vacation, in order to avoid the heat of the summer. When they began again in October, new members had joined their team, namely, another pair of newlyweds, Laurence Woolman and his wife, Janet, who had been sent by Breasted.
Laurence Woolman was a twenty-five-year-old architect with both an undergraduate degree and a master’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania. At six feet one, he barely fit into the bed provided for them at Megiddo, according to Janet.36 (This was also a problem for both Lind and Lamon, who were of similar height.) He also had no archaeological training, and neither he nor Janet had ever been out of the United States before.
Much of the Megiddo correspondence in the Oriental Institute archives that dates from May 1929 deals with Woolman’s selection as a new member of the team. In part, this was because of a new policy being instituted by the Oriental Institute. Breasted had traveled around the United States, auditioning architects for potential positions on the Oriental Institute excavations in Egypt, Iraq, and Turkey, in addition to Megiddo. Woolman had been selected for Megiddo, although Guy, of course, was not keen on the idea by any means.37
After initial strong protests that he didn’t need an additional draftsman, since Lamon intended to come back in September after finishing his coursework at Chicago, Guy reluctantly gave in.38 He probably would have put up much more of a fight had he realized that Woolman, who was single at the time that he was offered and accepted the position, was scheduled to get married just a week before leaving the United States for British Mandate Palestine in late August,39 and that this would mean hosting yet another set of newlyweds in the Megiddo dig house.
Guy actually didn’t have much choice in the matter, as usual, but at least this time Charles Breasted took the time to tepidly apologize: “I hope you will not feel that the new man … is being inflicted upon you against your wishes” (which of course he was). He continued, “In sending him to you, the Director is not only giving you an exceptionally able man who will unquestionably be of the greatest assistance to you, but he is hoping to afford an archeological training to men of sound architectural preparation.” He also explained further that this was a new policy on the part of the institute, and that two other young architects were being sent to join the team working at Luxor in Egypt, another was being sent to the team in Iraq, and yet another to the team in Turkey. And, as he concluded, returning to Woolman specifically, “His drafting ability is only incidental, but even at this he excels any one at present on your staff.”40
Knowing Guy as we do, this was hardly the way to endear the new man to him, but perhaps by this time he was getting a bit more used to such orders—and new staff members—sent by the Breasteds. He replied in late May with a cable stating that Woolman should plan to arrive by mid-September at the latest; it was not until July that he was informed there would be two Woolmans rather than one.41
The Woolmans set sail for British Mandate Palestine on 24 August, just as news was reaching the United States of a riot that had broken out in Jerusalem and rapidly spread to Haifa, Hebron, Safed, and elsewhere. Cables exchanged between the Breasteds in Chicago, Guy in London, and those back at Megiddo (Parker, Shipton, and Lind) confirmed that all was well at the site, and that the British police forces were checking in on them from time to time.42
The riots, which lasted from 23 to 29 August, began in Jerusalem over a question of access to the Wailing (Western) Wall by the Temple Mount, but quickly spread throughout the country. More than 130 Jews and nearly as many Arabs were killed, with close to 500 additional people injured during the week of rioting. A British inquiry set up in the aftermath, known as the Shaw Commission, concluded that the situation had been exacerbated by Arab fears of the ever-increasing number of Jewish immigrants into the country and what this might portend for the future.43 In the meantime, Parker, who had been kept busy fetching supplies from Haifa on and off during the entire period, enlisted in the Military Police and began carrying a gun at all times.44
By the time the Woolmans arrived in Haifa on 17 September, the riots were long over, but the wounds and scars were still fresh. Parker picked the couple up at the train station when they arrived. The drive to the dig house at Megiddo took hours over the potholed road that once again needed work. Throughout, Parker held forth on the “troubles” that had just boiled over, blaming everything on the Jews and pitying the Arabs, who were blameless, he said. The monologue continued at the dining table, where Shipton joined them for supper. “The Jew is to blame,” Woolman wrote the next day, in a letter to his parents. “They have antagonized the Arabs. All told, about 300 were killed and the newspaper stories you read of the poor persecuted Jew were all Jewish propaganda. All this business was premeditated and planned by them.… Mr. Parker told us the whole story last evening and it is a big mess to handle.”45
It is, frankly, astonishing to read these words, written by someone who hadn’t been in the country for even twenty-four hours and who hadn’t yet met any of the locals—Jews or Arabs—except for those employed at the dig house. Woolman’s subsequent letters home over the next few days, and even some thereafter, contained additional diatribes against the local Jews, whom he called “a lousy race” and the “scum of the earth” on more than one occasion. He also frequently protested the general treatment of the Arabs.46 However, Woolman’s son David, writing his own memoir of his parents, attributes these perspectives to the initial influence of Parker, and he is most likely correct.47
Anti-Semitism had always been present at Megiddo to some degree, as mentioned above, including DeLoach’s letter of two years earlier, in June 1927, in which he described the workmen’s perception of Guy being “half Jewish,” but now it seems to have festered and grown more poisonous. While it is difficult to point fingers nearly a century later, the increasing anti-Semitism at the site appears to have been specifically fomented and encouraged by Parker. He seems to have been pretty fervent as well as vocal in his opinions, but he was hardly alone in the country, for many of the British Mandate government administrators seem to have felt much the same way.
In any event, just two days after the Woolmans had settled in, both the Stapleses and the DeLoaches arrived from Trieste, having spent their summers in Europe. Lind had arrived during the day in between, so the dig house was now almost full.
The Woolmans were both rather amused at the daily dining schedule. They reported that breakfast was at 8:30 a.m., followed by tea at 11:00 a.m., then lunch at 12:30 p.m., with more tea at 4:30 p.m., and then finally dinner at 8:00 pm. Woolman eventually decided that the amount of tea they were required to drink was “a nuisance, really,” but that it would be an insult if they did not drink it. He also complained that the day was broken up so much by the meals and tea that they worked only five and a half hours each day, which he considered to be a joke. By early October, he had reached the conclusion that these were the most peculiar hours that he had ever worked, and that it was not surprising that nothing ever got done.48
P.L.O. and Yemima Guy had been scheduled to return to Megiddo from London on 12 September, but his mother died unexpectedly as they were heading for the ship.49 As a result, they did not arrive until 3 October, well after all of the others. Coincidentally, they joined up with Lamon in Trieste, when he was returning from his stay in Chicago for his coursework, and sailed together with him back to British Mandate Palestine.
It is clear, from the letters sent back home by Woolman, that during those weeks before the Guys arrived, there was very little for him to do, and very little work done by anyone, apart from more surface cleaning on the tell.50 It is also clear that a viper’s nest of anti-Semitism was now omnipresent in the house, pulling apart the supposed “congenial” members of the team. By this time, there had been more than two weeks of unabashed criticism and condemnation of the local Jews by Parker and others during the Guys’ prolonged absence, and the damage to the conviviality of the team lasted for the remainder of that season, and probably beyond.51
Of course, as Woolman also noted, “Mrs. Guy is a Jewess and all this anti-Jewish talk about the house will stop when they arrive.”52 On that point, he was quite correct, for within three days of the Guys’ return, Woolman said: “All anti-Jewish conversation about the house has ceased now that the Guy’s [sic] have returned. It is quite funny too as everyone is so careful of what they say. It is rather awkward at times.”53 That may have been somewhat of an understatement.
However, it is also interesting to see how the bloom came off the rose, for it was not long before Woolman became less enamored of Parker. By early November, he was describing Parker as “a cantankerous individual who is continually putting his fingers in the pie and making himself disagreeable.… He is absolutely impossible to work harmoniously with and has an intelligence which is limited to pounds and piasters.”54
As soon as the Guys finally arrived at Megiddo, they ordered that preparations be made for the remodeling of the dig house, because of the increased number of team members now present. When the partition between the dining room and library was taken down, in order to make more room at the dinner table, they found a note tucked in between the boards, which read, “By golly, Mister, you’ll tear down this house.” Suspicion naturally fell upon the long-departed Higgins, but it was never clear who had left it.55
Within a week, Guy was able to report to Breasted that they had begun to dig again up on the mound, as well as continuing to clear the top of the mound in their new area. He also put both Lind and Woolman to work constructing a 1:50 model of the stables that they had found, which would ultimately be sent to Chicago after it was completed. We should note that he had previously suggested to Charles Breasted that they should send a portion of one of the actual stables to Chicago, to be displayed at the World’s Fair scheduled for 1933, but that never came to fruition.56
Guy also sent the bad news that malaria had struck the local laborers with a vengeance, as well as some of the Egyptian workmen, because of heavy rains earlier in the year.57 However, there was no mention at all of unrest among the team members or anti-Semitic comments at the dining table, because those had all immediately ceased with the return of the Guys, as Woolman had noted.
Woolman also reported intermittently throughout the fall regarding work on the model of the stables. He described it as “mostly imagination,” but said that they would use the results of the excavation to help in making it, since they could discern the actual plan, stalls, mangers, and hitching posts still in situ on the mound. It was difficult work, he said; they were attempting to construct it using potter’s clay with a plaster of paris base on a wooden frame. He was also pessimistic, saying that the final result would probably not be very imposing, but that it would be valuable insofar as it would satisfy “to a certain extent the curiosity of those who wonder what kind of a building he [Solomon] kept the horses in.”
On the other hand, Woolman had a marvelous time discussing the proposed model with Leonard Woolley, who visited them on 22–23 October, while on his way to his own excavations at Ur in Iraq. Woolley was still digging in the cemetery where he had some years earlier discovered the famous “Death Pits of Ur” with their treasures (now split between the British Museum and the University Museum at the University of Pennsylvania), and the Megiddo team members were undoubtedly enthralled by his stories.58
“Black Tuesday,” 29 October, came and went at the dig, with no hint that anything traumatic had happened anywhere in the world. However, the crash of the stock market that day in the United States marked the beginning of the Great Depression, which would have a dramatic impact on the excavation in the coming years. Of more immediate impact, quite honestly, was Janet Woolman’s twenty-second birthday on 11 November, which everyone helped her to celebrate. We have to remember just how young some of these Megiddo people were at the time. Janet wasn’t the youngest, though; that honor went to Flo DeLoach, who was two years younger. Today that is the age of our typical college volunteer at Megiddo, rather than the staff members and their wives.
Woolman also noted at the time just how bad the road to Haifa was once again. The dirt that had been layered over the stone foundation of the road had by now been “pulverized to dust,” as he put it, and so they were literally driving on rock. It was also maintained by prison laborers, who had neither inclination nor incentive to work quickly. This affected the archaeologists on a weekly basis, of course, since they frequently went to Haifa on the weekends, but it also affected any visitors that they might have. By December, the road was again virtually impassable, despite the work done on it before the Great Royal Visit back in March.59
In the meantime, Charles Breasted came through on a flying visit from 17 to 20 November, stopping by Megiddo and Jerusalem while en route from Beirut to Cairo.60 Woolman was pleased by the visit, because it represented an opportunity to talk with the “Chicago people” about the specifics of the expansion to be made to the dig house. He had begun working on the plans back in early October, and by later that month the stones for the foundation were being cut, but other than that, he hadn’t been able to make much headway.
Because of the visit, major changes were made to the plans, which kept Woolman busy for a few more weeks. As he described it, “Charles Breasted’s visit was like a tornado descending upon us and as a consequence there is much to be done around here in the way of improvements. A tennis court will be made, a new water system will be installed, and the electric voltage is to be increased so that the ladies can have a sewing machine and use their electrical equipment.”61
It was a good thing that Woolman was working on the renovations to the dig house, because Guy had been absolutely correct during his correspondence with Charles Breasted the previous May. They really did not need Woolman at Megiddo, especially since Lamon had returned at almost the same time as the Woolmans had arrived. Remember that Woolman had been foisted upon them from Chicago, albeit with the best of intentions—to give him architectural training in the field—but in actuality there was very little for him to do at Megiddo. There was not much for the others to do either, Woolman said; at one point, in mid-October, he reported that they had enough excavation staff to oversee three hundred laborers but that there were only one hundred available, so the digging was going very slowly.62
There was even less to do for Janet Woolman, who must have been bored out of her mind, along with the other young newlywed, Flo DeLoach. They helped each other learn French, knitted sweaters, and whiled away endless days, going from breakfast to tea to lunch to tea to supper … and then learning how to play bridge in the evenings.63 She also kept busy by writing dozens of letters, as did Woolman, and by maintaining a diary.
The entries in Janet Woolman’s diary and the letters that they both sent home paint a picture of daily life at the dig and provide a window into what it was like at Megiddo for them. According to her, Mrs. Staples was kind and amiable, but Dr. Staples craved arguments. Guy was an “Oxford” type, affected, but courteous, while Yemima Guy was small, blond, and comely, but “pleasing in manner”—together they are “right interesting types.”64
Woolman tells a similar story when writing home to his parents. His first impression of the Stapleses and DeLoaches, upon their arrival from Trieste, is that they seemed to be “very congenial, both men and women,” and that he thought they would get along harmoniously, as he put it. He described Lind as talkative, a good-natured sort, with a good sense of humor.65
They continued to get along with the Stapleses and DeLoaches, eventually playing bridge with the Stapleses after dinner on many evenings throughout the fall,66 but Woolman grew less and less enamored of both Mr. and Mrs. Guy as the weeks went by. In one letter home, he describes Guy as being “conceited and set in his ways.” In another, he wrote: “The Guys are peculiar people. Guy is rather effeminate, extremely conceited and self-centered. He treats us all like school children and as a result there is a great deal of dissension in the camp. Nobody gets credit for what they do.” He also grew impatient, writing at one point: “It is disgusting sometimes the way things are managed here, a complete lack of organization. But I am not the Field director and hence will let the business ride and make the most of it.”67
Janet Woolman also provides us with another description of the dig house. It was built, she said, of brownish stone, with lots of windows, green shutters, and a red tile roof. There was a garden with geraniums and palms, “so it is right colorful.” Inside, she noted, the floors were simple rough planks and the walls just “plaster and boarding.” However, it was comfortably furnished and had all sorts of conveniences (including showers and bathtubs). There was also a big lounge in which they gathered during off-hours and downtime. She said that their own room faced the tell and also looked over the garden; we know that the rooms on the other side of the house had a marvelous view across the Jezreel Valley. Woolman added the fact that the flower garden went all around the house; he knew that there were geraniums and roses, but wasn’t certain about the identification of the other plants and flowers.68
There were also, she said, six servants—three men and three women—all of them locals. He said there were actually more—two waiters, two kitchen boys, a cook, four cleaning ladies, and a general caretaker, all either Arab or Russian. He noted that the Arabs did the kitchen work, “cooking and serving, carrying water, shining shoes,” while the Russian women did the housework, “making beds, cleaning rooms, laundry work.” The waiters, he said, “wear white robes, a red band around their stomach, and a fez, like Shriners.”69
The Woolmans’ letters also shed light on their weekend excursions to Haifa, where they eventually joined the Palestine Railway Club, at the urging of Harry Parker. It gave them a place to go when they were in Haifa for the day, with tennis courts, pool tables, magazines, and dances. Originally, he thought that it cost only $1 per year to join, though it turned out to actually be $5.20.70
Back at the dig house, they received the London Times and the Egyptian Gazette, Woolman said, and were looking forward to receiving the Christian Science Monitor when his parents arranged for it (note that this was in addition to the expedition’s subscriptions to Scientific American, Century, and Atlantic Monthly, which were paid for back in Chicago).71 As for exercise, they played deck tennis, on a court just one-third the size of a tennis court; apparently they were all familiar with this game since it had originated as a sport on the ships that they took to and from the United States. It gave them a good workout, according to Woolman, but they were happy to hear that Charles Breasted had confirmed that the full-sized tennis court should be built.72
They also began taking walks during the afternoons and on the weekends, in the vicinity of Megiddo. One day in late September, they went to visit the ruins left by the Roman legions when they were stationed in the area. Woolman noted that it was only a thirty-minute walk, and that there were remains of Roman tombs and what he described as an amphitheater. He later elaborated, saying that the amphitheater had disintegrated “into practically nothing,” but that there were still stones present and that the hollow in the side of the hill was “so symmetrical that you can tell what it was.”73 The scenery was gorgeous, he added. Although they could never see the actual sunset, since it was behind a hill, “the reflections on distant hills and the sky and clouds is indescribable, like a dream, such soft and warm color, purples, greens, browns and reds all softened to a grayish tone like an artist’s conception of the ideal.”74
And, once it started raining every day, the valley looked like a large lake early in the morning, since the mist was always very thick and settled low on the ground. It is, Woolman said, “a gorgeous sight.”75 With the coming of the rain, the hills and fields began to bloom. He waxed poetic about it: “The country is gorgeous now. The colors of the landscapes are indescribable. The fields are becoming greener and greener. We can see storms coming miles away across the plain and they cause many fantastic effects together with the clouds such that you can’t imagine. If an artist should paint such a picture you would not believe it.”76
However, as he noted, their walks also took them through the local villages. He was less than impressed with these, writing: “You should see the dirty places these natives live in, some in tents (Bedouins), wandering Arabs, some in mud clay houses, no roofs and lousy dirty and so poor and ill kept. You wonder that here 3000 years ago our civilization received its beginning and it is said that they lived far better in King Solomon’s time than they do now.”77 He also observed that “in the country away from the towns there has been no progression since biblical times. The people are very primitive … [and] remain uneducated, backward.… At present, they are like animals, slightly advanced like people of the Bronze Age 7000 years ago.”78
One day, in mid-December, the Woolmans went for a walk with the Stapleses around the tell and through the village of Lejjun, to the outlet of the Wadi Ara pass, though which both Thutmose III and General Allenby with their armies had passed, though thirty-four hundred years apart. Woolman was horrified by what he saw in Lejjun, writing home: “That is where our laborers on the tell come from. It is a purely Arab village and the houses are ramshackles [sic] and falling to pieces. Such hovels these people live in. Dead dogs were lying in the streets, blood stains where a cow had been slaughtered, and for sanitary facilities they don’t even resort to the ‘Specialist.’ The rain washes away their houses bit by bit and when it stops they get out with their mud plaster and patch up the damage.”79
The digging season ended for the year on 28 November, no more than a week or so after Charles Breasted’s visit. The Egyptian workmen were allowed to return home on 1 December. As Guy proudly noted, the team had put in 185 days of work that year, as compared to 143 the previous year, when he had just taken over and they had a shortened season.80
With the season over, they all left for their vacations in late December. The Woolmans went to Egypt, along with the DeLoaches, who were heading for Luxor. The Stapleses went to Beirut. The Guys went to Port Said. The others scattered. They weren’t gone very long, however, for by 30 December, the Woolmans were back at Megiddo. Though Woolman told his parents, “We hated to come back,” they were glad to sit down and relax with the bundles of letters as well as the newspapers and magazines that had arrived in their absence.81
However, even the brief vacation that everyone had taken over the Christmas holidays didn’t help much, for by this point the congeniality that Guy professed to see in his team had dissipated. Actually, the team members themselves all got along; it was Guy with whom they were no longer enchanted.
Woolman minced no words in writing home on the first day of the new year. “Guy is a dawdler and does not care to hurry,” he told his parents. “You have him well sized up when you asked if he guarded well his own interests. He is very careful, afraid of making a mistake.”82 He elaborated a few weeks later, writing in mid-February:83
He [Guy] is a stubborn Englishman and seems to be getting away with murder but it is not for us to judge but to do our work and cooperate for the interests of the Oriental Institute. It is for them to learn the truth about this man. There is much to be said but it would accomplish nothing. I am hoping to get my work finished up so we can be sent to Luxor next year. There is some pushing to be done tho in the next three months and that spirit is entirely lacking in this expedition. When you drink tea 3 times a day you can understand why little is accomplished.
He hadn’t changed his mind by early March, writing, “Guy is timid, so afraid of making a false step and too willing to take a slow pace.”84
More than anything else, it was the situation of the DeLoaches that consumed Charles Breasted, Guy, and others, including the Woolmans, during the early months of 1930. In late January, Guy sent a cable to Charles that read: “THE LADY REJOINS HER FAMILY SHORTLY STOP DOES THIS AFFECT DECISION STOP UNDER CIRCUMSTANCES AM PREPARED TO BE ADMONITORY BUT MERCIFUL.” To any telegraph operator transmitting the message, or anyone other than the two correspondents, it might as well have been in code, but obviously they both knew what it meant. Charles replied on the same day, as part of a longer cable: “WE HAVE BEEN ADMONITORY BUT MERCIFUL SINCE FIRST EMPLOYING HIM MY DEFINITE REACTION UNCHANGED SINCE OUR DISCUSSION BUT PREFER LEAVE FINAL DECISION YOUR HANDS.”85
Now, almost ninety years later and with additional information from others present at the time, we are able to figure out a portion of the story, but even so, not everything is yet clear. We know, for instance, that “the lady” can only have been Flo DeLoach and the “him” whom they were employing can only have been Ed DeLoach, for there is no other couple that matches this description. We have seen already that these two were figuratively in the doghouse with the Megiddo administration by this point, because of their sudden marriage, which had taken everyone by surprise.
We can also figure out the meaning of “The lady rejoins her family shortly,” but it remains a mystery how Guy would have known that already in late January, for it was not until the first week in March that Woolman wrote home with the news that the DeLoaches would be leaving in a few days. According to him, Flo had found out she was pregnant and therefore they had decided to return home, in part so that the baby would be born in America, and in part because there was no room in the dig house for a new mother and baby; they would have had to live separately from the others. As he put it, “No one here knows of it except us. Janet has been Mrs. DeLoaches’ confidant more or less and we knew of it from the beginning, which was discovered when she was examined by a doctor while in Beirut.”86
But, as Woolman also noted, there was a question in his mind about whether DeLoach had actually been quietly fired by Guy. As Woolman put it initially, “Whether he [DeLoach] received the skids here or not we don’t know but it was evident that conditions around here were none too pleasant for them.” He later added, “The truth of his leaving is not exactly known, but I am of the impression that he was not in good standing with the Oriental Institute more or less, because of personal reasons.” His final statement on the matter indicates that he was certain by then that DeLoach had been let go; he claimed not to understand why, but was certain that “DeLoach was not given a square deal.”87
The DeLoaches broke the news of their impending departure to the rest of the team just five days before leaving. It was a momentous declaration, for it meant that the last remaining member of the original team from 1925 was leaving the project.
On 10 March, they boarded the RMS Mauretania, known as the “Grand Old Lady of the Atlantic,”88 when it stopped for the day in the harbor of Haifa, and then headed for home. The Woolmans came to see them off, even going so far as to accompany them on board; Janet said later: “We surely wanted to stay on that boat—only 20 dollars to N.Y. second class, too. Well, we may be next, who knows.”89
Olof Lind was also crestfallen that they had left. They would not lose touch with him, however, for eventually he came to live with them and served as the caretaker for Ed’s father, first in Texas and then in Georgia.90
Both Guy and Charles Breasted were undoubtedly pleased at this sudden turn of events. Almost a week after the DeLoaches’ departure, Guy sent a cable to Charles, saying that they had left and that he was optimistic this would speed up the surveying, though he didn’t say why or how.91 However, when the DeLoaches arrived in Chicago, James Henry Breasted was supposedly caught completely by surprise, for he “knew nothing of their departure from Megiddo,” according to Woolman, who concluded, “It looks like a queer business all the way then.”92
It may be that everything had been orchestrated by Guy and Charles Breasted, but it also could be that James Henry Breasted was not as unaware as he professed, for we can see a pattern here of targeted firings over the years. First it was Higgins, who was targeted and then fired by Breasted in 1925/26. Then it was Fisher, who was targeted and then fired by Breasted in early 1927. Now it was DeLoach who was targeted beginning right after his marriage in April 1929 and quite possibly fired just before leaving in March 1930. We will run across this again in future seasons, until eventually Guy himself was targeted and then fired in 1934, hoist with his own petard.
The digging season finally began in late March, two weeks after the DeLoaches’ sudden departure.93 By that time, Woolman was able to report that he expected to be done with the model of the stables within the month.94
Regarding the new additions to the house, he had earlier said in letters sent home in late February that his plans called for a total of twelve new rooms, including five bedrooms, two baths, a new dining room, and a new layout for the kitchen.95 Now, a month later, he was able to confirm this, stating: “The new addition has two baths, one for Mr. and Mrs. Guy, a private one, and one for the others. There are four other bedrooms in the addition and a library. Guys have two rooms and a bath. And there is also plenty of closet space. The floors are to be of tile upon concrete and the ceiling as high as possible so as to make it cool in summer. They are about 17 feet high.”96
What is perhaps most surprising, however, is a single sentence that Woolman included in his letter home: “We do not expect Dr. Breasted this year but I hope he does get out here soon as I have never met him.”97 Charles Breasted came through instead, once again on a flying visit, staying for less than twenty-four hours on 11 April. He gave his final stamp of approval to all of the proposed renovations, though a subsequent cable that he sent from Chicago in mid-May made it clear that the expenses were beginning to mount up and could not go any higher. In fact, he specifically said in the cable, and in a follow-up letter, that he needed to stress the necessity of employing “exceptionally strict” economic measures during the next few seasons. Clearly the Great Depression was already beginning to have some impact on the Oriental Institute and its endeavors, both at home and overseas. Ironically, he was at pains to say, “Please note in this connection that we shall regard a new tennis court as a necessity and not a luxury.”98
Overall, the letters and cables exchanged during this year (1930) are far more concerned with personnel matters and the new addition to the house than they are with details of the actual excavations. For instance, throughout the season, Staples continuously pushed for various raises, travel arrangements, and even support for his application to be the new director of the American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem, a position that was about to become vacant. To all of these, both Breasteds replied negatively, especially since Staples was Canadian, but reiterated that they would like him to continue at Megiddo for three or even four more years. In response, Staples said that he would be happy to serve in whatever capacity they needed him, but that he trusted it would be with an increase in his annual stipend at some point.99 As it happened, the appointment to the American School did not come to pass, and Staples stayed for only one more season at Megiddo, leaving for good in July 1931.100
Guy also asked for a salary raise for himself, as well as a salary for his wife. The two Breasteds again pushed back immediately: it was absolutely out of the question to give Mrs. Guy a salary, Breasted said in mid-January, because of the precedent that it would set, not to mention the optics of a salary line for the director’s wife in the annual budget. Instead, they would give Guy himself a small raise.101
In addition, Charles Breasted said at the end of May, they could offer Guy a five-year contract renewal at a total salary of $6,000 per year. Would he take it? Charles appealed specifically to Guy’s sense of taking part in an expedition of tremendous scientific importance: “We are all engaged in this campaign because we are devoted to science.… There has gradually grown up among the members of the Oriental Institute a fine sense of fellowship in this great scientific Crusade to which we are devoting our lives, and I have been convinced from the beginning that you share in this feeling, not least because it is so broadly human and transcends the boundaries of nationality.” However, the offer letter went astray, and Guy didn’t receive it until early October, leaving Charles to wonder for several months whether his message had been heeded. They finally resolved the matter and Guy signed on for another five years.102
Also toward the end of May, the Oriental Institute sent out a bulletin with information for the next year, which stated that the Woolmans would be relocated to the Chicago dig in Luxor. Woolman expressed relief, writing home: “The profession called archaeology does not appeal to me in any way and I have been most fortunate here at Megiddo in not having to indulge in it to a great extent. The type of architecture they are unearthing here is totally barren of charm and impressiveness.”103
In mid-June, a number of the Megiddo excavators went to Jerusalem, to attend a ceremony for the laying of the foundation stone for the new Palestine Archaeological Museum. Its construction was being underwritten by John D. Rockefeller, Jr., at the urging of Breasted. Guy sent Breasted a cable afterward, with the news that the ceremony had been successful.104
Breasted had provided remarks for the ceremony, which included several prescient phrases. He viewed the building as something more than what is usually denoted by “museum,” for he suggested that it would also serve as the headquarters for the Department of Antiquities, house a library of archaeological books, and host lectures in a theater-like setting. All of these functions, along with the exhibition galleries, “will be the means whereby archaeological knowledge will be made accessible or will be distributed to the Public and to students.”105 Breasted’s words have held true up to the present day, for the headquarters of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) are still in the building, as are the galleries and other public spaces; they are only now—nearly ninety years later—being moved into new facilities in West Jerusalem.
Ten days later, the Woolmans left Megiddo, on 29 June, at the end of the first half of the season. They did not return to the region until they were en route to Luxor for the beginning of the season there in early October, but they did stop by Megiddo at that point.106 They met the new members of the team, who had joined for the fall portion of the 1930 season. There were two, Dudley W. Phillips and Robert M. Engberg, plus their wives.
Although Phillips had been taking classes in Egyptian hieroglyphics and Oriental history while at the University of Chicago on a fellowship, he had previously been a student at University College in South Wales, Cardiff. There he had taken courses from the well-known British archaeologist Sir Cyril Fox, who was the keeper of archaeology at the National Museum of Wales. As an undergraduate and after his graduation in 1928, Phillips had done survey work with Fox, following a series of earthen banks and ditches across Mercia. These were known collectively as Offa’s Dyke, a construction that dated to the seventh and eighth centuries CE. Fox described him as a “good companion,” noting that his “fiddle always accompanied him on these expeditions, and his talk, interlarded with appropriate music (either invented or drawn from memory) will be remembered, I am sure, in many an inn parlour on the Welsh border till our generation passes away.”107
Although the British connection and the fact that Phillips was big and strong were appealing to Guy, Charles Breasted warned him ahead of time that, although Phillips was “of sterling qualities and exceptional intelligence,” he was also young. He was just twenty-four years old and had a tendency to be overly critical, particularly of Americans. Charles’s precise words were that Phillips was “perhaps inclined to be a little blunt and tactless.” He also noted that Phillips usually thought of himself first and the team second. And, just to make matters even less palatable to Guy, Charles warned him that Phillips was engaged to a Frenchwoman, and that they would probably get married beforehand and come to Megiddo together (as indeed they did).108 As it turned out, Phillips and his wife were at Megiddo for only just over three months, from early October 1930 until he was suddenly fired in mid-January 1931.109
FIG. 23. Engberg excavating skeletons (courtesy of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago)
However, the other new team member, Robert M. Engberg, and his wife, Irene, stayed for the next four years. Engberg had graduated from the University of Chicago in 1928 and then done postgraduate work there in both anthropology and American archaeology from 1928 to 1930. He was sent out by Breasted to replace DeLoach as the topographic assistant. He proved to be an essential member of the expedition before leaving in June 1934, in order to head back to Chicago for a fellowship at the Oriental Institute and to serve as a research assistant and instructor. He later finished up his PhD in 1937, with a dissertation written on the Hyksos.110
Engberg also published the very first volume to appear from the expedition, a study of the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age pottery from the site, which he coauthored with Shipton (1934). He also contributed a chapter to Herbert May’s book on the cult remains at Megiddo (1935) and helped Guy to finally publish the Megiddo tombs (1938), as well as eventually writing two accessible overview articles that appeared after the excavation had ended (1940, 1941). In short, although they lost DeLoach, by gaining Engberg as his replacement the expedition found someone who would be instrumental in helping to publish their results.
By early October, everyone was in place and the dig resumed. Breasted, Guy, and Staples were in communication throughout the fall, concerned with the manuscript that would become the second preliminary report, on the 1927–29 seasons of excavations, which included a chapter by Staples on an inscribed scaraboid that they had found. It would eventually see the light of day the following year, in 1931, but not without a certain amount of hair pulling and teeth gnashing, for Breasted did not like Guy’s paragraphs on the geological background of human development and liked Staples’s contribution even less.
Guy accepted the criticism in fairly good spirits and suggested that the entire section on geology should be cut, though they eventually reached a compromise regarding the material.111 However, Staples’s section took quite a bit more thought. Breasted and the editors completely reworked it back in Chicago since the scholars there totally disagreed with Staples’s analysis. In fact, they had rewritten it so much that, as the editorial secretary told Staples, “the conclusion to which your article now leads is quite different from its former one.”112
A final letter, which Guy sent on the last day of the year, contained only details about the newly completed quarters in the dig house. These allowed everyone much more room, including larger bedrooms for each of the married couples—the Stapleses, Phillips, and Guys—as well as for the bachelors, who had taken over the upstairs rooms of the original house. They had also been making new purchases, including wicker furniture and other tables and chairs, but were holding off on new curtains and carpets until Charles Breasted’s imminent arrival, which was to take place early in the new year.113
Considering the dearth of discoveries that season, it is especially ironic that in late December, during the winter break, Guy was told to start using a codebook when sending cables to Chicago. He was specifically instructed to purchase something called Bentley’s Complete Phrase Code, which had been published in 1923 and was currently in its eighth reprint. It was already in use by those in the Chicago office, by the OI archaeologists at Luxor in Egypt, and by Charles Breasted while he was traveling, or so Guy was informed. Rather apologetically, he was also told, “Since this code was devised for business communication, it lacks archaeological and scientific words and phrases, as well as many other terms peculiar to our field. At the end of the code book will be found a supplement of over 2000 blank symbols. A list of words and phrases is being compiled in Chicago for use in connection with the supplement. This office will be glad to receive suggestions for this private supplement. A copy of the list will be forwarded to you as soon as it is prepared.”114 In fact, although the codebook was used only sparingly rather than for every cable, the news of some of the momentous discoveries and events at the site that still lay in the future would indeed be sent in code.
As per usual during the “Guy years,” much of 1931 was consumed with personnel matters, although that was also the year that they discovered the water tunnel, as we shall see. First and foremost, Phillips, who had arrived just the previous October, apparently lived up to all of the dire warnings that Charles Breasted had relayed to Guy before his arrival. We are not provided with details of what happened during the last months of 1930, for the letters are suspiciously silent until January, but we then are informed that Phillips was given a stern talking-to by Charles Breasted, and then fired on the spot, during the latter’s quick visit to Megiddo on the eleventh of that month. Guy also had it out with him the next day, reiterating what had been said. As a result, Phillips and his wife abruptly departed a day or so later, sailing for Europe on 14 January.115
As Guy later explained, he had let Phillips know in no uncertain terms that he had not been given responsible work up on the tell because he wasn’t fit to tackle it; when given a project, of dealing with a group of objects from a tomb, “he had shown a good deal of inaccuracy and a lack of application, and obviously considered it beneath his dignity to draw the pottery.” He had also wanted to supervise the work of other people “without himself knowing how to do it.” In the end, Guy said, he had warned Phillips that he was “in acute danger of becoming, permanently, an intellectual prig.” To all that, Phillips had no response in the end except to ask whether Guy would be willing to shake hands, which they did.116 We do have to remember that Phillips was still very young, and that Guy had been given fair warning that Phillips had a tendency to be blunt, tactless, and overly critical, but nobody had told him that Phillips was also both arrogant and unwilling to do the actual work that was necessary.
No sooner had they finished dealing with Phillips than an issue arose with Staples and his wife, Ruth, who by this point had told the rest of the team that she was pregnant. Guy had mentioned it, as inside information acquired from his wife, Yemima, in a confidential letter to Breasted in early November 1930,117 but by mid-January it was no longer a secret. Mrs. Staples had been planning to return to Canada to give birth, probably sometime in May, and then return to Megiddo with the newborn, but she had now learned that babies were not welcome at the Chicago house down in Luxor, and was worried that the same would be true at Megiddo.118
She was quite right in her fears, for apparently there had been yet another “decision which had been arrived at,” but concerning which the Stapleses had not yet been informed. Moreover, Guy straight-out lied to them, by his own admission, telling them that the news of her pregnancy had not yet even been discussed, so they shouldn’t worry about it. In fact, Guy and Charles Breasted had been conferring about it for quite some time by this point, and had floated various options, including having the Stapleses stay in Haifa, with Mr. Staples commuting to the dig. Nevertheless, the Stapleses were reassured by Guy’s bald-faced lie, and so Mrs. Staples left for Canada on 31 January on the SS Britannic. Perhaps to make up for his duplicity, Guy wrote to the captain of the ship, arranging for Mrs Staples to be waited on hand and foot for the duration of the voyage home.119 Of course, in hindsight, and given what happened with the Stapleses, we can now say with certainty that the DeLoaches were quite right to have left when they did, the previous year, after similarly realizing that they were about to become parents.
However, everything was fairly happily resolved when Staples announced that he was taking a position as associate professor of Semitics and Old Testament at Victoria College, part of the University of Toronto, which was his alma mater. He would be leaving the dig in July, when their spring season ended. Perhaps to his surprise, both Breasteds as well as Guy were very supportive and congratulated him.120 Actually, they were relieved, because they had been hoping that just such a situation would materialize. The only thing that marred an otherwise happy parting, since the Stapleses never learned that they would not have been welcomed back to the dig house with a newborn, was a fight over finances and reimbursements that continued throughout the summer until it was finally resolved, with hard feelings remaining on both sides.121
And with that, another multiyear partnership with a member of the Megiddo team came to an end, for Staples and his wife had been part of the expedition since September 1928. All ended well for him, for he taught at Victoria College for the next thirty years, from 1932 to 1962, enjoying a stellar career as professor of Ancient and Near Eastern Studies and a good reputation as a Bible scholar. Their daughter Elizabeth, conceived at Megiddo, also graduated from the college two decades later, like her father before her.122
In the meantime, in order to make up for the loss of Phillips, Guy sought, and gained, permission to hire a young English surveyor named Hucklesby, for June and July. Hucklesby came highly recommended by other archaeologists, including Fisher, who was now working at Jerash (in what is now Jordan). However, as it turned out, Guy did not like Hucklesby personally, though he did good work, so Hucklesby’s contract was not renewed after the initial term ran out at the end of July.123
Guy subsequently told the Breasteds that he needed two new people, “a genuine surveyor, who does not want to do other things, but is content to continue for some years to survey,” and “a young draftsman who is prepared to continue to be a draftsman.” He wanted to select these two himself, Guy said, and would seek them out in London over the summer.124 As for a recorder for the expedition, to replace the departing Staples, who had been serving in that role, Guy didn’t want anyone new; he had already told Shipton that he could have the job. As Guy told Charles Breasted, Shipton “knows the ropes, takes kindly to the job, and can be trusted to carry it out neatly and well.”125 However, as usual, the Breasteds had other ideas, and so Herbert Gordon May eventually joined the Megiddo team in October as the new recorder, much to Guy’s chagrin in both the short term and the long term.
It could be said, without exaggeration, that May’s tenure at Megiddo started out on the wrong foot and ended on an even worse note three years later. It began when Breasted cabled Guy in early July, and told him that May and his wife, Helen, would be joining the team. He said that May was an excellent Old Testament and Hebrew scholar, and that Mrs. May was a graduate of the Boston Art Institute and not only could draw but had actually taught drawing.126
Rather than simply accepting the decision, Guy fired off a cable and then a letter, stating that he needed a draftsman, not another student of Hebrew and the Old Testament (for that description had fit Staples as well). Moreover, the fact that Mrs. May could draw was irrelevant, Guy said, because all of the wives who had been at Megiddo to that point “have in the past kept out of the drafting and recording rooms.” As he wrote, “I fancy this is an arrangement common to all the expeditions, and I find it a sound one.”127
All of this back-and-forth caused a great deal of confusion for poor May and his wife, who were still back in the States, trying to arrange for passports and turning down other job opportunities that had come their way. One of May’s sponsors, a professor at the University of Chicago named J.M.P. Smith, wrote to Breasted, appalled that Guy would prefer Shipton; it was he who referred to Shipton as a teenage boy who hadn’t been to college.
Of course, although those statements about Shipton were true, Smith did not account for the fact that Shipton had by that point been at Megiddo for more than three years and had absorbed an incredible amount of on-the-job training. It is perhaps a good thing that Guy never saw Smith’s letter, for Smith added, almost parenthetically, “I think myself that Guy ought to have a scholar alongside of him in Megiddo and May is just the type of man who ought to be there.”128
Charles Breasted tried to reassure Guy that it would all work out. Breasted tried to do the same, explaining that May was “a very quiet, modest, and engaging fellow,” while again stating that Helen was “an excellent artist.” However, May himself was quite worried that his relationship with Guy was starting out awkward and strained.129 Still, when the Mays finally arrived at Megiddo in late October, they were greeted kindly, and Guy later wrote to Charles (two separate times), saying, “I like May.”130 Unfortunately, that state of affairs did not last long.
Even Lamon was not left out of the three-ring circus that was Megiddo that year, for Guy seems to have taken aim at him as well. Guy told Breasted that there had been a number of incidents involving alcohol over the years, including one summer when Lamon had been left alone at the dig house, with only the servants to see to his needs. Now, Guy reported, he and Charles had had a chat with Lamon. Since then, Lamon had not been drinking, which Guy said was a welcome change.131
Perhaps as a result of all this, cables and letters were exchanged between Guy and the Breasteds concerning a transfer of Lamon to one of the other Chicago expeditions, though it is not clear at all whose idea this was—Lamon, Guy, or the Breasteds. Regardless, the transfer didn’t take place—just as DeLoach’s hadn’t—and it is quite likely that Lamon was never even aware of the fate that might have awaited him.132 We can be thankful that he did not leave the expedition at that point, for he had much to contribute in the coming years.
All of these personnel sideshows, taking place as they did throughout the entire year, must have affected the team’s archaeological work at Megiddo. And yet it seems that they were able to push on. Guy himself must have been buoyed by the fact that his preliminary report on the excavations from 1927 to 1929 was published early in 1931, with copies reaching British Mandate Palestine by late March.133 It was only the second publication to come out, following Fisher’s 1929 initial report.
And yet Breasted remained unsatisfied with the speed of the excavations. In late February, before the season even began, he sent a long letter to Guy in which he said that while he had complete confidence in Guy’s plan to go layer by layer, mapping and then peeling off each layer in turn, he was concerned about the slow pace and the fact that, after five years of digging, they still hadn’t reached “the monuments of the important age of the Egyptian Empire,” by which he meant the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Dynasties, from about the time of Hatshepsut through Ramses II.134
He didn’t want to upset the general plan of archaeological attack on the mound, Breasted said, but according to his reckoning, “we are near enough to the level of our old friend the King of Megiddo, who fought Thutmose III, to be able to reach his castle soon.” He also thought that there was a good chance they might find a palace from this period located on the northern part of the mound, and perhaps even an archive of cuneiform tablets dating to the Amarna Age in the fourteenth century BCE. He also, quite unnecessarily, reminded Guy that archaeological levels are not always actually level, and suggested that the whole idea of horizontal excavation that Guy was pursuing might not be the best way forward. When he had not heard back from Guy by mid-June, Breasted sent another letter, reiterating some of these concerns and opinions.135
Guy, who had refrained from replying to Breasted’s earlier letter, no doubt because it had infuriated him, finally replied to both of Breasted’s letters in late June. In no uncertain terms, Guy let Breasted know he was going as fast as he could while maintaining proper scientific procedures. As he said, “It is hard to explain to you on paper how very strongly I feel that we should not be tempted to abandon the stratigraphic method … I am getting down to earlier strata as fast as I can, you know.” His entire plan was to get the stratification as nearly correct as possible; departing from that would invalidate everything that they had been working toward. “People are always saying that archaeology is not an exact science,” he wrote. “I am doing all I can to show that more accurate results can be obtained.”136
Guy concluded his letter by saying, “The complexity of the strata in towns like Megiddo is such that I know that this is the only method of getting things right, and I should be more loath to depart from it than I can tell you.” Moreover, he said, there was no way to predict how far beneath their present location would be the layers dating to the Egyptian New Kingdom period—“even supposing I did dig down to look for the palace of Thutmose III, I have not the least idea of its position.”137
Breasted hastened to reassure Guy that he had no intention of asking him to abandon the method of systematic stratigraphic clearance, level by level, that they were pursuing at Megiddo. He remained optimistic, though, that Guy “might soon find the upper portions of a royal building of the Egyptian imperial period,” and if so he “could of course quite safely go down into this earlier building without disturbing your stratigraphic operations.”138
However, Breasted turned out to be wildly off the mark in predicting that they would soon get to the layers dating to the Late Bronze Age. These turned out to be located well below, in Strata VIII and VII, and Breasted did not live to see them brought to light.