Leonard Woolley (1880-1960)

Charles Leonard Woolley was appointed in 1905 as an assistant in the Department of Antiquities in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford under Arthur Evans. His archaeological career started in 1907 when he joined a University of Pennsylvania expedition to excavate at Karanog and Buhen in Nubia. Woolley worked there until 1911 when he joined an Oxford University expedition, also in Nubia. In the same year The British Museum chose him to succeed D.G. Hogarth as director of their excavations at Carchemish until 1919.

This work was interrupted, first by a six week survey in 1914 on behalf of the Palestine Exploration Fund in Sinai with his Carchemish colleague T.E. Lawrence, and later by war service as an intelligence officer (from 1916-18 Woolley was a prisoner of war in Turkey). In 1921-22 he worked at Tell el-Amarna, Egypt and then led an expedition to Ur and Ubaid (for The British Museum and the University Museum, Philadelphia) between 1922-34. In 1935 Woolley was knighted. He began excavating at Tell Atchana (ancient Alalakh) in 1937. This work was interrupted by the Second World War but resumed after until 1949. Woolley died in 1960.