Agatha Christie and Archaeology by Charlotte Trümpler

Agatha Christie and Archaeology, edited by Charlotte Trümpler, was first published in Great Britain in 2001 by The British Museum Press.

The English edition was translated from the German by Anthea Bell, from the original 1999 edition produced by the Ruhrlandmuseum Essen and Scherz Verlag. This is the paperback issue, printed in Slovenia, and it carries ISBN 0714111481.

About Agatha Christie and Archaeology

The book is a collection of essays by different contributors, illustrated with photographs throughout. It looks at a side of the world’s best-selling novelist that many readers never knew: the decades she spent on archaeological excavations in the Middle East.

The frontispiece shows Agatha Christie standing in front of the head of Rameses II at the Ramesseum in Thebes, Egypt, in 1931 or 1933, photographed by her husband Max Mallowan.

The cover reproduces the classic Simplon-Orient-Express travel poster of Aleppo, a fitting image for a writer who travelled east by that famous train.

The German edition accompanied a museum exhibition in Essen, and the English edition followed when the exhibition came to the British Museum in London.

As a result, Agatha Christie and Archaeology reads partly as a biography and partly as an exhibition book, bringing together the people, places and objects connected with her life in the field.

Agatha Christie, Max Mallowan and the Digs

Christie first travelled to the excavations at Ur in Iraq in 1928, after a journey on the Orient Express. There she met the young archaeologist Max Mallowan, and they married in 1930.

For the next three decades she joined him season after season on his excavations, including Arpachiyah in Iraq, Chagar Bazar and Tell Brak in Syria, and later the great Assyrian city of Nimrud.

She was no idle visitor. She photographed finds, catalogued objects, cleaned delicate ivories and kept the dig house running, while still writing her novels in whatever quiet corner she could find.

She later described those years with warmth and humour in her own memoir of life on the digs in Syria, and Agatha Christie and Archaeology draws on that side of her life throughout.

From the Excavations to the Novels

The desert, the dig houses and the long train journeys east fed directly into her fiction. Readers will recognise the background of Murder in Mesopotamia, set on an excavation in Iraq.

The same world appears in Death on the Nile, Appointment with Death, They Came to Baghdad and, of course, Murder on the Orient Express. Agatha Christie and Archaeology shows how closely her real experiences and her stories were linked.

Who Will Enjoy Agatha Christie and Archaeology

This is a rewarding book for Agatha Christie collectors and readers who want to know more about the woman behind Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple.

It will also appeal to anyone interested in the archaeology of ancient Mesopotamia and Syria, the history of the British Museum’s excavations, women in archaeology, and the golden age of travel between the wars.

Agatha Christie and Archaeology makes a thoughtful gift for a crime fiction lover or a history enthusiast.

Copies of the English edition of Agatha Christie and Archaeology do not appear often in South Africa, so this is a good opportunity for local collectors to add it to their shelves.

Condition – Good

A solid, complete copy. The covers are clean and the colours bright, with light rubbing to the edges and corners and a slight curl to the boards from shelving.

The spine is sound and the binding tight. The text block is clean, with a slight wave to the page edges. No inscriptions or markings seen.

A large, heavy paperback of about 1.2 kg, which will be well packed for posting.