The Wilderness of Zin

In their famous six-weeks’ survey of southern Palestine for the Palestine Exploration Fund in 1914, the archaeologists C. Leonard Woolley and T. E. Lawrence covered large tracts of the desert wilderness, studying monuments of numerous periods, from the prehistoric to the Islamic. Their records were first published in 1915. Not only was this work significant as an archaeological and historical record, but it also represented an astonishing feat on the part of Woolley and Lawrence, characteristic of the indefatigable spirit and polymathic interests of so many explorer-scholars in the Levant during the 19th and early 20th centuries. This new publication by Eisenbrauns includes previously unpublished letters and photographs, including several by T. E. Lawrence, and other material relating to the work still housed in the Palestine Exploration Fund’s archives. In this revised edition, readers will be able to enjoy one of the most famous archaeological surveys ever carried out and appreciate Woolley and Lawrence’s work in a fuller context.