He was also the first to excavate archaeological sites in the Balikh Valley, to the west of the Khabur basin.įollowing the outbreak of the Second World War he served with the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve in North Africa, being based for part of 1943 at the ancient city of Sabratha. His excavations included the prehistoric village at Tell Arpachiyah, and the sites at Chagar Bazar and Tell Brak in the Upper Khabur area (Syria).
(It was at the Ur site, in 1930, that he first met Agatha Christie.) In 1932, after a short time working at Nineveh with Reginald Campbell Thompson, Mallowan became a field director for a series of expeditions jointly run by the British Museum and the British School of Archaeology in Iraq. He first worked as an apprentice to Leonard Woolley at the archaeological site of Ur (1925–31), which was thought to be the capital of Mesopotamian civilization. Sir Max Edgar Lucien Mallowan was a prominent British archaeologist, specialising in ancient Middle Eastern history, and the second husband of Dame Agatha Christie.īorn as Edgar Mallowan in Wandsworth on, he was educated at Lancing College (where he was a contemporary of Evelyn Waugh), and studied classics at New College, Oxford.
