Gertrude Bell was born on July 14, 1868 in Washington Hall, England. Her parents were the
industrialist Hugh Bell and Mary Shield Bell. She attended Lady Margaret Hall at the University
of Oxford and was the first woman to obtain first-class honors there.
She became an archaeologist, poet, author, mountaineer, photographer and government official.
Her works include:
Safar Nameh
Poems from the Divan of Hafiz
The Desert and the Sown
The Thousand and One Churches
Amurath to Amurath
The Palace and the Mosque of Ukhaidir
She took around 7000 photographs.
Her extensive travels included several archaeological expeditions in the Middle East.
She spoke Persian and Arabic and wrote about her travels.
During World War One Gertrude worked with British intelligence. Also she founded an archaeological
museum in Baghdad and became Iraq's Director of Antiquities.
Lonely and with ill health she took a fatal overdose of sleeping pills and died July 12th 1926.
She left money to fund the British Institute of Archaeology in Iraq.
