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“I should not say ‘buildings,’ or even ‘building,’ but rather ‘room’; for we learned that the British Government, because of an understanding with the Turkish authorities, had given permission to build only one room. Accordingly Woolley and Lawrence had built a room of two parallel walls about ten feet apart, extending fifty feet south, then thirty-five feet westward, and again fifty feet north. Closed at both ends, this giant letter U was indeed a room; and, although somewhat astonished, the Turkish Government had to concede the fact. Of course, the honorable inspector could not object if little partitions were run across to separate the sleeping portions from the dining-room and office, and in due time convenience demanded that doors be opened from various parts of the structure into the court. Thus it was that, when we first saw it, on the right was a series of rooms for the storage of antiquities and for photographic work; on the left were the sleeping-rooms of the excavators and their guests; and in the center was the delightful living-room with open fireplaces, built-in bookcases filled with well-worn leather-bound volumes of the classics with which a British scholar would naturally surround himself, and a long table covered with the current British papers as well as the archæological journals of all the world.


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