Monday, September 12, 2011

The career of Max Mallowan

Whenever I read a biography these days, I tend to take particular notice of how the subject ‘made’ their career – a habit developed when I ploughed through so many Victorian biographies, memoirs, lives & letters. In that age when the number of salaried jobs was increasing rapidly in the new fields of management in both the public & private sectors there were growing opportunities for those who put in the necessary application.

I was thinking how some seem to have it much easier than others as I recently read a biography of the archaeologist Sir Max Mallown.

The son of a successful Austrian businessman & a French mother, Mallowan went to Lancing (where he did well at School Certificate) & then to New College Oxford, but got only a 3rd class degree. However, in the words of his biographer, Henrietta McCall, ‘It would be wrong to think that in the 1920s any particular stigma attached itself to a young man with such a modest degree’

After finals the Dean of Divinity asked him about his future plans; Max replied ‘archaeology in the east’ – inspired by reading of finds by Percy Gardner at Olympia, but without any experience at all of the kind of work involved.

The Dean sent him to the Warden, who gave him a letter of introduction to the keeper of the Ashmolean museum. He had just received a letter from Leonard Woolley who was excavating at Ur, so sent Max to see Woolley at the British Museum.

He was interviewed by Woolley & Katherine Keeling (later to be Lady Woolley) who seems to have taken quite a shine to Max.

He was taken on to start work on the excavation of Ur in October 1925.

Agatha Christie (as part of the process of getting over a painful divorce) visited Ur in winter 1928, while Max was back in England recovering from appendicitis. She met Max on her return visit to Ur the next year & they married in September 1930.

It would be a mistake however to think that Mallowan just had things fall into his lap without any effort on his part. For example he prepared for his first interview with Woolley by reading:
  • a BM pamphlet about Woolley’s excavation of the temple of the Moon God
  • Koldewey History of Babylon
  • Budge Babylonian Life & History
  • L King History of Sumer & Akkud
among others (though not, apparently, any of the popular articles which Woolley wrote for the Illustrated London News).

Having been given his chance, Mallowan had a very successful career in the Middle East, with the devoted support of his wife & helped by oodles of self-confidence.

In 1962 Max was appointed fellow of All Souls after answering an ad in The Times & coming top of the 70 applicants.

‘I felt that I had through the efforts of my life-work, recovered from the lack of academic distinction in my youth.’


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