City in the Sand

Who are we? Where do we come from? What formed us? Why are we as we are now? Today's world is amorphous and inexplicable without an idea of past, including most ancient, its prehistory. Mary Chubb's City Sand, reprinted after 42 years, is about a dig (and several peripheral others) Iraq 1932, sandwiched between much shorter accounts of vigorous walking Greece and Crete with other archaeological friends before and after it. Poignant thoughts arise of then and now Iraq when she writes, country was at peace, and a good man was king. Westerners, welcomed and given concessions to dig certain areas, could plan well ahead and find skilled local labour. As secretary to Director of dig, Hans Frankfort, a Dutchman she greatly admired, Mary Chubb was part of an international group funded by University of Chicago as part of a vast plan of archaeological discovery Middle East, stretching forward into late thirties. For what became a group not just of colleagues but of friends, it was a time of excitement and intellectual richness, shared and therefore doubled. The main task was discovery with what seems miraculous skill and luck of Eshnunna, an ancient vassal city of Ur, and its complex uncovering - horizontal layers of building, thirty foot down, sorted into their periods, combed minutest detail. It was heady work. Seals with which merchants marked their wares told, for instance, how goods had arrived there from India much earlier than anyone had thought; statues identified ancient gods; inscriptions, ancient rulers. Beautiful jewellery, beads, metalware, pottery, tools, artefacts of all sorts testified to sophisticated civilization which had ruled there. It was dizzyingly exciting, daily surprises, sense of awe, and Miss Chubb, an amateur writing for general reader, though she learn a great deal on way, put across its fascination to non-specialist with detailed explanations from specialists on hand. Always it is what she calls the human touch, a voice speaking down ages that appeals most to her: thought of man who held seal in his warm brown hand; of baby whose perfect footprint was pressed plaster hundreds of years before Abraham, away down Ur, had gathered up his family and belongings ...to set out westwards for his new homeland; of thumb prints on ancient bricks; of fearsome pear-shaped stones bored through centre, exactly like those still used by dig's basket boys as defensive weapons, now mounted on sticks; underground for thousands of years, these wooden handles had perished. As her earlier book about her first dig, at Tell el-Amarna Egypt, Nefertiti Lived Here, emphasis telling is also on human story today - that of team working on sites: archaeologists, architect, photographer, recorder of objects found, reader of inscriptions, and Gabriel, indispensable odd-job man and driver who kept show on road. Miss Chubb is a natural stylist, her writing vigorous, fluent and graceful. Vivid images are slipped with ease (the muffled pulsing of ship's heart), and descriptions of landscape and weather, particularly lovely Greek and Cretan countryside, turn one's heart over now and then. This, of course, is what makes book most memorable. The subject must fascinate all but most incurious, and to bring it alive modern terms there is a group of people an atmosphere of comradeship, hard work, tough conditions and enormous fun. But it is writing itself that really brings it alve: Miss Chubb has not just skill with language but a novelist's way with people. The personalities, day-to-day life, reach us over 70 years as brightly as if they were (as she is) still with us. So her story is not just of historical interest but an imaginative re-telling of a human one, about young people, their adventures and achievements, desert and its terrors; above all past and its gifts to us present.