At sixty, Agatha remained energetic and productive; her wits were sharp, her health was good, and during the next ten years she produced work that, though lacking the sparkle of her postwar books, remained interesting and popular. If that decade followed a routine, it was an unusual one: the creation of at least one annual detective story, sometimes accompanied by a novel, a play, a collection of short stories, and a yearly expedition to Iraq. The Mallowans would leave England in December or January, going first to Baghdad and on to Nimrud, returning in March after a season’s digging. During those expeditions Agatha would plan and write her books. The simplicity of life in the desert and her absence from England during the worst of the winter, added to her strong constitution and remarkable stamina, account for her physical and intellectual resilience, while Max, her family and a group of much-loved friends buoyed up her spirits. At the School of Archaeology in Baghdad or in the camp in the desert Agatha was serene, busy and at home.
In many respects archaeology was like detection. It required its practitioners to recognise, match and arrange fragments of clues, to reconstruct what might have happened from evidence that remained. Luck and intuition were needed, as well as persistence. Like detection, too, archaeology had changed since Agatha had been first enraptured by it in the nineteen-thirties. Even then it was no longer the preserve of enthusiastic amateurs, supporting expeditions from private fortunes, using methods that were often ruthless and slapdash. By the time Max had joined Woolley at Ur, archaeologists tended to be trained professionals, competing for posts, staff and funds within the universities, museums and learned societies. They looked for resources from public institutions; their finds were not all hauled triumphantly home but distributed among their benefactors, including the countries that had given them permission to dig. Their goals – sifting through the remnants of a mound rather than unveiling monumental buildings – were more modest than those of their nineteenth-century forebears and their techniques more sophisticated, for after the First World War significant advances had been made in methods of digging, recording stratification, analysing and cataloguing finds.
During the years Agatha spent in Syria and Iraq, archaeology gradually became even more scientific, as complicated techniques of detection and dating developed in laboratories reduced the part played by instinct and chance in unravelling the past. Fewer of the public were familiar with Biblical and classical literature, but other means of popularising archaeology, including television, sustained attention – and thereby a flow of small and large donations. The past was still accessible, although those who wished to investigate it were finding it more difficult to do so. The authorities in those countries where an excavation was taking place were becoming increasingly sensitive to exploration of their soil, although nationalism and isolationism had not yet grown so fervent that all access by aliens was forbidden.
In temperament and attitude, however, the archaeologists among whom Max and Agatha worked in the nineteen-fifties and sixties resembled their colleagues before the War and, indeed, their Victorian predecessors. Members of a close-knit profession, with fierce rivalries among different schools, often obsessional but capable of extraordinary patience, they were specialists who worked in teams. An expedition brought together many different experts: an architect, surveyor, epigraphist, historian, people who knew about theology, geology, photography, drawing, and so on. Max’s expeditions were small and economical, with each member serving more than one role. Agatha was an important member of the team.
The photographic record of the finds was, for instance, still largely her responsibility; in 1951 she asked Cork to arrange for Ober to acquire a special camera, complete with flash equipment. She also took charge of cleaning the pieces of broken ivories, part of the treasure found at Nimrud, spreading the fragments on towels and meticulously sponging them with Innoxa cleansing milk, a method she had hit upon herself. She was equally inventive in her domestic arrangements, inspiring the creation of éclairs with cream from water buffalo and nut or hot chocolate soufflés cooked in a tin box by successive cooks, ‘drunk or mad or both’, one guest remembered. If a soufflé dropped, one cook would apologise to her with the refrain, ‘Squeeze me, madam, squeeze me!’ Compared with other expeditions, the Mallowans’ team lived, as Max put it, ‘like fighting cocks’, enjoying Stilton sent by Allen Lane from England, and the airmail copy of The Times, delivered to Mosul by special arrangement. Cork forwarded post, which took only four or five days to arrive. At Nimrud, as everywhere else, the Mallowans changed for dinner, Agatha wearing a fur jacket with voluminous sleeves, which tended to knock glasses of water into her neighbour’s lap. She dressed in the desert much as at home, in sensible tweed, silk and cashmere, with dresses from Worth for special occasions and a variety of clothes from cheap shops for ordinary days. There is a remarkable photograph of her pottering across the sand, silhouetted against the mound, like a thoughtful bird, in stockings and laced-up shoes, carrying a handbag. Hats were tied on with scarves to keep them from vanishing in the constant wind. On her return to London each year Agatha, always tidy, rushed immediately to a hairdresser to be rearranged. Like everyone on the dig, she slept in a tent, but she had a room of her own for writing at the end of the expedition house. There she was not to be disturbed, even though groups of visitors constantly arrived, not so much to see the excavations, some of Max’s colleagues thought, as to try to catch a glimpse of Agatha – at least in the case of Finns and Swedes, among whom her books were now enormously popular.
The camp was sparsely furnished but the British School of Archaeology in Baghdad quickly became a repository for the objects Agatha acquired on frequent shopping expeditions over the seasons. Accompanied by women friends from the British diplomatic community and the School, she descended on the bazaars, buying ornaments, lamps, fabrics and great quantities of rugs. It was not always entirely clear for whom these purchases were intended. Sometimes Agatha’s companions, ostensibly recruited to help her buy presents for other people, would find her bestowing the articles on themselves on the way home. Purchases might be packed up for sending to London or taken back to the School, where they would remain for a season or two and then suddenly be despatched to England, for Agatha and Max regarded the School as in many respects an extension of their home and saw their colleagues, particularly the younger ones, as part of their family. Indeed, a clause of Max’s will was to provide for a sum to be set aside to furnish an annual dinner for members of the British School of Archaeology in Persia and Iraq, at which at least one member of the Mallowan – Hicks – Prichard family would try to be present, and where a toast would be drunk in memory of Max and Agatha.
It was, however, an extended family, as people came and went at different stages in their careers, with a core of those who were at Nimrud every year, of whom perhaps the most faithful and indispensable were the foreman, Hamoudi, and the tireless Barbara Parker, who organised the details of the expedition and took the blame when things went wrong. Agatha presided, like an eccentric mother – rather like Clara, in fact – watching with amusement as members of the expedition fell for one another, or infuriated each other, counselling the younger married women on the dangers of miscarrying in the difficult surroundings of Iraq (almost before they themselves knew they were expecting babies) and building up the scraggier young men on a diet of chocolate truffles. Max has described the members of successive expeditions in his Memoirs, where he included extracts from some of the ‘Cautionary Verses for Archaeologists’ with which Agatha commemorated each person. The Memoirs also give some of the ‘Nimrud Odes’, with which, as at Greenway and Pwllywrach, she marked birthdays and other celebrations. There was a ‘Nimrud Book of Dreams’, as well, the outcome of Agatha’s protesting that Max refused to listen to her recital at breakfast of what she had discovered in sleep the night before. ‘Dear Professor Mallowan,’ she wrote in the covering letter, ‘it has been brought to my notice that you adopt a somewhat unsympathetic attitude towards dreams. You have heard, no doubt, of Napoleon’s famous Dream Book. I am submitting for your attention the Nimrud Book of Dreams. This contains certain well authenticated dreams … both curious and interesting and [which] shed a valuable light on the psychology of the dreamers … we hope to publish a further series shortly and hope we may enrol you as a regular subscriber … Yours faithfully, Snore and Moonshine. PP’ (for Agatha now tended to nod off) ‘A. Snooze.’
Max’s team worked hard and by the beginning of 1951 their excavations began to produce interesting finds. As well as the Governor’s Palace and the Burnt Palace in the eastern section of the mound, they were by then examining the buildings in the western sector, looking particularly at the northern and southern wings of Ashurnasirpal’s North-West Palace. Layard’s excavations a century before had concentrated on the State Apartments; Max and his assistants began to look at the domestic wing, where a rich collection of ivories came to light, including a large figure of a bull and what Max’s Memoirs describe as ‘little feminine trinkets’, among them a collection of shells, sometimes engraved, containing cosmetics. A grave contained the remains of a princess, wearing a jewelled pendant – ‘the Nimrud jewel’ – her tunic held by a pin twenty-six and a half centuries old. In the Administrative Wing of the Palace were treasures of a different kind, the royal archives, and, most wonderful, a sandstone monument erected by Ashurnasirpal, inscribed with the record of the completion of the city in 879 BC, which concluded, appropriately, with ‘an account of a sumptuous banquet’ given on the acropolis over a period of ten days to nearly 7,000 persons. It gave, Max claimed, a living vision of the feasts held in the spring of 879 BC, vast alfresco meals served in the spacious courtyards.
In 1952 Max decided to explore the wells in the Administrative Wing of the Palace, a difficult and perilous operation. Despite the warning from an American oil expert, ‘Every well claims a life,’ the undertaking was completed without a single loss. In earlier excavations Layard had investigated the wells down as far as the water level. Max’s team now looked below, finding in the first shaft the remains of a number of texts, fragments of cuneiform writing on wax, ivory binding and boards, before the bottom of the well collapsed. Max was more prudent in his investigation of the second well, thus missing remarkable discoveries which the Iraq Department of Antiquities were to make thirty years later of ivories, ivory heads and bowls, painted and decorated in gold leaf. He made stunning finds, however, in the third shaft. Brick-lined, it was very deep, with a corkscrew bend in the middle. Seventy or eighty feet down, in the sludge beneath the oozing water, digging all day and, by the light of hurricane lamps, all night, they unearthed a cache of treasure: the ivory head of a beauty and, in contrast, of one they christened ‘The Ugly Sister’; horses’ cheek-pieces decorated with a relief of a female sphinx; a winged cobra emerging from her skirt – all the objects Max subsequently described in Nimrud and Its Remains, and which may be seen in the British Museum, the Metropolitan Museum in New York City and the Iraq Museum in Baghdad. Agatha carefully wrapped these objects in damp towels, realising that after two thousand years they needed gently drying out. The most marvellous discovery was a pair of plaques in chryselephantine, one of which remained in Baghdad, the other being flown to London in May. Max described in his Memoirs the cruel scene they showed: a man being mauled by a lioness in a thicket of papyrus reeds and lotus flowers, waving in the wind. The colours of the flowers were indicated by touches of lapis lazuli and carnelian and the man’s curly hair was of fine ivory capped with gold. The British Museum published a poster displaying this treasure; a copy hung at Winterbrook and hangs at Greenway today.
The hazards of these undertakings were sometimes increased by appalling weather, particularly in the 1953 season: ‘Living in constant damp seems to be a cure for rheumatism,’ Agatha wrote to Cork, ‘I can’t think why!!!’ The beginning of that year was exceptionally difficult: ‘The weather has been awful, roads cut as well as bridges. Snow on the foothills and we have been breaking ice on the water tubs each morning.’ Machinery sent by the Iraq Petroleum Company for exploring the second well was delayed when the lorry became bogged down in the mud: ‘Thunderstorms, rain, and we all huddle in quantities of jerseys and woolly knickers. Tents keep out the rain all right, but, oh, how clammy to creep into the sheets each night – and clothes like damp fish in the morning.’ These were uncomfortable surroundings for a woman of sixty-three but Agatha retained her good humour. Meals were important to keep up the expedition’s spirits: ‘I wish I could bring home our charming Persian cook,’ Agatha wrote. ‘He makes lovely walnut soufflés. He has just been discoursing on meat. “You can tell me when you want turkey. I kill. That day, tough very. Next day, tough. Next day, not very tender. Day after that he good tender very nice. Chicken he very good lay eggs. If not good, not lay eggs, him cock.”
Another season – 1955 – also started unpromisingly, when they were assailed by dust storms and thunderstorms alternately. Agatha was a good sport, clambering in and out of trucks with the rest, despite her heavy frame and swollen ankles, enduring bumpy roads and nightmarish fording of rivers. When spring came, however, the desert became beautiful again, with fields of delicate wild flowers in glowing colours, under a clear sky.
After seven years at Nimrud it seemed that Max’s work on the acropolis might be done. He began to discuss with Cork his plans for publishing a large, lavishly illustrated book, on Nimrud and its remains. His expedition had by then recovered and distributed an outstanding collection of finds; it appeared, moreover, that the political situation in Iraq was becoming increasingly unstable. The young King Feisal (to whom Agatha had presented one of her books when he came to lay the foundation stone of the new museum in Baghdad) and his Prime Minister, Nuri-es-Said, were being threatened by various subversive factions, some vehemently nationalist. The atmosphere was growing unfriendly and suspicious; even the books Cork sent to Baghdad for Agatha were detained by Customs, which believed that, because the ends of the parcels were closed, they must contain at worst bombs, at best Communist propaganda.
In March, however, the expedition discovered traces of another palace, Fort Shalmaneser. More of an arsenal, it was enormous, over two hundred rooms spread over some twelve acres. The sides of the Fort were protected by towers, walls and canals, and on the western side were two great mounds of mud-brick. Max’s team began to investigate the eastern and higher mound, where they discovered the debris of King Shalmaneser’s throne-room, whose massive walls had toppled. After days of digging, they unearthed the huge throne base inscribed with scenes of the King’s triumphs. Max’s Memoirs describe the other discoveries made by his indefatigable team of twelve, including Agatha – and a large force of labourers: beautifully executed murals; a talisman in five colours, showing the King beneath a winged disk and the tree of life, surrounded by foliage and gazelle; superb ivories, some ‘burned blue and grey in the avenging fire’, found in the rooms Max believed to have been the Queen’s apartments and the harem, including an ivory lunette illustrating a winged sphinx and a winged cobra. Despite the uncertain political climate, he decided to continue these excavations; their completion was to take another three years.
During the decade of Max and Agatha’s labours at Nimrud, much extra work fell to Edmund Cork, now more than Agatha’s literary agent. She had entrusted him with power of attorney and he knew, as far as anyone could, the intricacies of her financial and literary affairs. He also found himself acting every spring as general factotum, chivvying Agatha’s tenant at Cresswell Place, who constantly forgot to pay the rent, dealing with her gas, telephone and electricity bills and forwarding correspondence for collection to the British Consul in Mosul. There were some hiccoughs in these long distance operations: ‘By the way, I usually have to pay about 11/2d on letters from you,’ Agatha wrote to Cork one season. ‘It’s not the money that worries me! But occasionally if I and the Persian cook (reasonably opulent) are out, there’s only the bottle washer who apparently never has more than 2d in his possession and so the postman won’t leave it! Also don’t want the Consulate in future to have to pay.’
Cork sent Agatha’s proofs (A Pocket Full of Rye, suspected of being ‘Agricultural Propaganda’, was detained by Customs), and books: in 1953 she asked for ‘recent French novels, not too heavy’; in 1957 the list included The Fountain Overflows, The Comforters, In Defence of Colonies, Maine Architecture, and The Life of Marie Antoinette. Some of Cork’s commissions were odd: ‘there may be a parcel of Ham from Australia. Better be passed on to Miss Fisher to Eat or Keep …’ and ‘please forward nylon stockings to Mosul, my only hope in life, as nothing here fits me!’
In 1958 there was a revolution in Iraq. Young King Feisal, his uncle and the Prime Minister were murdered. The Mallowans were deeply upset, not simply because, like many in the West, they feared the international consequences of these events, but also because they had known and liked many of those who now suffered at the hands of the revolutionaries. They were not harassed by the new régime but it was time to leave. Nimrud itself was changing. The extension of a rough track, linking the dig to the main road, and the tarring of much of the main road to Mosul had brought a great many visitors in the last three or four years of the expedition’s work, more, indeed, than were welcome. ‘Latest Holiday Resort’, Agatha wrote in ‘The Last Days of Nimrud’; ‘All Amenities. Highly Mechanised. Visitors Welcomed. Bring the Kiddies. Combine Culture and Amusement. Visitors’ Car Park 50 fils. Admission to Mound Quarter Dinar. Ascent of the Ziggurat and view of surrounding country through telescope 100 fils. Don’t miss NIMRUD-ON-TIGRIS:
A guaranteed Epigraphist
In Kurdish trousers gay
For fifty fils will write your name
In cuneiform on clay.
A famous Novelist’s on view
For forty fils a peep,
But if you want a photograph
It will not be so cheap!’
The mound had anyway lost its beauty. Scarred by the archaeologists’ bulldozers, it no longer had its innocent simplicity, with the stone heads poking up out of the green grass, studded with spring flowers. The last ‘Nursery Rhyme of Nimrud’ was not light-hearted:
Hush a bye, children, the storm’s coming fast.
The roof it is leaking, the House cannot last.
When the wind rises, the tents too will fall.
And that is the end, RIP, of you all.
In the early months of 1960 Max and Agatha left Nimrud for the last time. Her straw hat still hangs in the British School of Archaeology.