Gertrude Bell: Made her mark on the Middle East

A British adventurer, diplomat and archaeologist, Bell traveled widely throughout the Middle East and played a leading role in the creation of the modern Iraqi state in the early 1920s. Born into a wealthy English family in 1868, Bell studied history at Oxford University then spent a number of years trekking around the world, mastering multiple languages (including Arabic and Persian) and pursuing her interests in archaeology and mountaineering. She published various accounts of her expeditions, including a 1907 book titled “The Desert and the Sown,” about her journey across Syria.
At the start of World War I, Bell, along with T.E. Lawrence (aka Lawrence of Arabia) became part of a British military-intelligence gathering operation in Cairo known as the Arab Bureau. Bell went on to work as a diplomat in Baghdad during and after the war, and was instrumental in defining the borders of the modern state of Iraq and installing Faisal I as its new king, in 1921. Additionally, Bell helped found the Baghdad Archeological Museum (now called the National Museum of Iraq) before she died of an overdose of sleeping pills in 1926. Paradoxically, even though Bell was a powerful woman in a male-dominated world, she didn’t believe that women were smart enough or experienced enough to vote and campaigned against female suffrage.