17 Facts About Leonard Woolley

Sir Charles Leonard Woolley was a British archaeologist best known for his excavations at Ur in Mesopotamia.

Leonard Woolley is recognized as one of the first "modern" archaeologists who excavated in a methodical way, keeping careful records, and using them to reconstruct ancient life and history.

Leonard Woolley was born at 13 Southwold Road, Upper Clapton, in the modern London Borough of Hackney and educated at St John's School, Leatherhead and New College, Oxford.

Leonard Woolley was interested in excavations from a young age.

In 1905, Leonard Woolley became assistant of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.

Leonard Woolley next travelled to Nubia in southern Egypt, where he worked with David Randall-MacIver on the Eckley Coxe Expedition to Nubia conducted under the auspices of the University of Pennsylvania Museum.

Lawrence and Leonard Woolley were apparently working for British Naval Intelligence and monitoring the construction of Germany's Berlin-to-Baghdad railway.

Leonard Woolley then moved to Alexandria, where he was assigned to work on naval espionage.

Leonard Woolley received the Croix de Guerre from France at the war's end.

Leonard Woolley led a joint expedition of the British Museum and the University of Pennsylvania to Ur, beginning in 1922, which included his wife, the British archaeologist Katharine Leonard Woolley.

Leonard Woolley's body was found buried along with those of two attendants, who had presumably been poisoned to continue to serve her after death.

Leonard Woolley was able to reconstruct Pu-Abi's funeral ceremony from objects found in her tomb.

In 1936, after the discoveries at Ur, Leonard Woolley was interested in finding ties between the ancient Aegean and Mesopotamian civilisations.

Leonard Woolley was one of the first archaeologists to propose that the flood described in the Book of Genesis was local after identifying a flood-stratum at Ur "400 miles long and 100 miles wide; but for the occupants of the valley that was the whole world".

Leonard Woolley married Katharine Elizabeth Keeling, who was born in England to German parents and had previously been married to Lieut.

Leonard Woolley had hired Keeling in 1924 as expedition artist and draughtswoman; they married in 1927 and she continued to play an important role at his archaeological sites.

In 1930, Leonard Woolley invited his friend Agatha Christie to visit a dig site in Iraq, where she met her second husband Max Mallowan.