The Archaeologist Origins of a Romantic War Hero
Sir Thomas Chapman was a nineteenth century married baronet who left his family for his daughters’ governess. The couple assumed her surname, lived together, raised a family sans marriage as “Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence”, and had five illegitimate children. The second was Thomas Edward Lawrence (1888 – 1935), better known as Lawrence of Arabia. They eventually settled in Oxford, were Thomas Edward, who preferred to go by his initials T.E., attended college. Lawrence was a history buff from early on, particularly interested in medieval and military architecture. He also loved to travel, and spent much of his youth exploring old churches and castles.
Lawrence travelled to France to study medieval fortifications, and to Syria and Palestine to study Crusader castles. A thesis on the subject earned him a history degree with honors from Oxford, in 1910. He then secured a fellowship, and joined an archaeological expedition that excavated Hittite settlements on the Euphrates, from 1911 to 1914. On his free time, he travelled around the Middle East, and became familiar with the region and its peoples. The lands in which he worked and travelled was part of the Ottoman Empire, of whose leanings in case of a general European war the British were unsure. So Lawrence, under the guise of scholarly pursuits, undertook reconnaissance missions in Ottoman territories. The results proved valuable in World War I.
