From Pylos to Karpathos: Archaeology now and then

Slaughter as high art. The Pylos Combat Agate, c. 1450-1500 BCE, length: 3.6 cm, Pylos Archaeological Museum (Wikipedia).

Celebrity-explorers Theodore and Mabel Bent didn’t excavate in the Greek Peloponnese in the 1880s – they would never have been given permits.

The recent state-of-the-art excavations and discoveries at the ‘Griffin Warrior’ tomb, Pylos, Peloponnese, and the present (June 2026) exhibition of its spectacular finds in Athens, give a chance to reflect on the methods employed elsewhere in the Aegean by the Bents in the 1880s: the island of Karpathos (Dodecanese), for instance (and professional archaeologists might like to look away at this point).

The Aegean: Vroukountas, Karpathos, indicated (ToposText).

The Bents were on Karpathos after 5 March until before 21 April 1885, some seven weeks, arriving from Tilos (where they found little, camping, ironically, in the old monastery that now acts as bulwark to the new museum, on whose information panels they, inexplicably, go unmentioned).

The couple ride far and wide over Karpathos, before reaching the distant north-western tip and the once notable city of Vrykous (modern Vroukountas (various spellings) [35.80167678950954, 27.16483337973251]). A site busy with people from neolithic times to the 19th century CE, it was one of the island’s important centres in antiquity (see, e.g., Nigel McGilchrist’s imaginative treatment, in McGilchrist’s Greek Islands #16: Southern Dodecanese: Astypalaia, Tilos, Karpathos, Kasos, Kastellorizo (London, 2011).

Βρυκο͂ς – Brykous, polis near Ag. Marina, north of Avlona, Karpathos, Dodecanese (ToposText).

Arriving from Olympos, via today’s Avlona, the Bent party camped at Vroukountas between 30 March and 2 April 1885, pitching a tent, typically topped with a ‘Union Jack’ it seems, in the level area directly in front of what is now referred to as the cave-church of St John – a strange sight for modern August festival-goers to contemplate no doubt: the Bents washed themselves in the cave’s stone basins and struggled with an unruly tent; their long-suffering dragoman, Mathew Simos from Anafi (in the Cyclades, not very far away to the west) slept outside…

Unaware of these campers, McGilchrist (see above) describes the setting: “At the northern extremity of the promontory, steps lead down into a spacious natural cave deep within the headland… To the left was the spring which served the settlement in antiquity; it is possible that the sanctuary of the Nymphs was here, from which a relief showing Hermes and the Nymphs, formerly immured in the forecourt of the Church of the Koimisis in Olympos, once came. The cave is now organised as the shrine of Aghios Ioannis Theologos, whose screen, font and altar are all composed of various ancient spolia.”

“Proceeding along the cliff we found tombs of every possible description, single chambers, double chambers, tombs one over the other, tombs with steps above them cut in the rock, as if for ornamentation, but the most frequent and those which we found the least disturbed were those constructed like this plan…” (Bent, J.T. 1885: 237. Bent would have sketched the plan in his site log, now lost).

Forty-two years after Ludwig Ross (Ross 1845) had visited the island, without reaching Vroukountas due to bad weather, Bent wrote a lengthy article on his researches for The Journal of Hellenic Studies (1885, Vol. VI: 233-242) and sets the scene: “Brykountios was apparently the most considerable town during both the earlier and later occupations, and as it was situated at the extreme north of Karpathos, about two hours distant from the Elympos, and several days’ journey from the Konak, we were able to pitch our tent there and excavate unmolested… The chief interest connected with the pottery I brought back is that it is the first to come from Karpathos and from these rock-cut tombs. But the tombs themselves were extremely interesting, and the great variety of periods of pottery found in close juxtaposition would suggest that the graves had been used again and again, just as the graves of the Karpathiotes [are] now…” (Bent, J.T. 1885: 236, 237) (Bent kept notebooks of his researches but unfortunately they all seem to have been lost apart from those of his final journey to Socotra and Aden in 1897.)

(Two further interesting characters besides Ross can be introduced here: the swashbuckling Charles Thomas Newton (see later below), who never visited but acquired important Roman antiquities from Karpathos now in the British Museum; and the aristocratic William Roger Paton, Bent’s friend, who did explore the island’s southern region a year or so after the Bents and acquired fine Mycenaean wares there, also now in the BM (Paton 1887; 1889)

Mabel Bent’s account of their stay at Vroukountas, before Easter 1885

Mabel Bent devotes several pages in her ‘Chronicles’ to what was clearly a happy stay at this campsite, which included Theodore’s 33rd birthday, some notable finds, a few memorable meals, and the arrival of family letters (with belated news of the death of General Charles Gordon at Khartoum on 26 January 1885).

Mabel begins her account:

“You must excuse these smudges as I am sitting cross-legged on Theodore’s bed in our tent and was just interrupted by a man who came for two candles Theodore had sent for that he may explore a cave.

We are encamped for four days at Vourgounda. We came here yesterday [30 March 1885] with two mules and two workmen to make excavations on the site of an ancient city. We only took our medicines, without which we never move, necessaries of clothing, and books for four days, food and bedding; but I had so much to sit on that I had to hold with both hands all the way. As I did not fall off I was pronounced an excellent rider by the men.

There is a long rocky point jutting into the sea on the west of Karpathos, far north, near Tristomo and covered with ruins. Here everyone lunched at noon and then Theodore set the men to work and I went to the end of the point and had the tent pitched by a high rock, which shelters us from south winds. As Sunday night was the only rainless one we have had this long time, the ground was dry and by great good luck we have a level, gravelly floor.

At camp on Socotra: Theodore, Ammar, Manthaios and Ernest Bennett. From the Bents' Southern Arabia (1900). Image © The Bent Archive — “’We always travel with green fly tents with double flaps, the whole made of Willesden canvas, which does not get mouldy when folded up wet.’ – Theodore Bent, Esq., in the ‘Album’. Beware of imitations. Samples and prices from Willesden Paper and Canvas Works, Willesden Junction, N.W.” (‘Field’, Saturday, 10 April 1897). Twenty years after Karpathos, Mathew Simos (standing right) at camp on Socotra, by then fully familiar with tents (Bent, M.V.A. 1900: 365; archive.org).

Neither Mathew nor the other two men had ever seen a tent before, so beginning with turning right side out I had to lead by example and prompt and instruct them in everything; all in Greek too. Do not think I had only to cause the pegs to be driven into the ground and put the eyes or guys, or whatever you call the ropes, over, no, only one peg is done like that. No two ropes are the same, either as to length or the angle from the tent: some are under rocks, some are round rocks, some are over rocks, and one had to be strung through a hole in a rock… I was tired enough in my tongue and limbs when, after hoisting the Union Jack, I sat down to survey the tent, and, really, the ropes all dancing have a very funny effect. The sun was hot outside but it was hotter still setting up the beds inside, ‘tromero sesti’ as they said.

After that I went to the workmen, who had discovered the pavement of a Byzantine church. We turn up our noses at anything ‘tis Vizantines epoches’, so Theodore took them elsewhere.

Soon after our arrival, a messenger came and brought us two letters, the first we have had for more than five weeks and our first news of poor General Gordon’s death. As soon as we had joyfully read them we began to lament the many more that had been lost, but two or three hours later another man came with 23, and two newspapers, February 7 being the latest, and March 9 the latest letter.

“A very steep path leads to the small round entrance and several flights of steps lead down into a large cave. The holy place is shut in by a low wall and some pillars which do not touch the roof. Holy water drips into two little stone troughs and thither we hie with our sponges and towels to wash…” The cave-church of St John, Vroukountas, scene of a three-day festival over 29 August (St John the Baptist/Agios Ioannis Prodromos) (karpathostravel.com).

When the sun set we scrambled home. Next to our tent is a little hut built against the wall as a kitchen for pilgrims who come to a little chapel in the cave beneath. A very steep path leads to the small round entrance and several flights of steps lead down into a large cave. The holy place is shut in by a low wall and some pillars which do not touch the roof. Holy water drips into two little stone troughs and thither we hie with our sponges and towels to wash. The workmen sleep among the rocks; there are plenty of caves about. When it got dark we went to the kitchen to dine. It was Theodore’s birthday.

The sacks of my bed and the tent were laid as a tablecloth on the soft wet earthen floor. We sat on two stones. Theodore leaning against the middle post supporting a lambskin full of water, and I, as I found afterwards, very few inches from the lamb of the period. Mathew built a table and seats next day. All the rocks and stones around were full of food and pots and a candle stuck by its own wax to one of them shed a dim light, except once when it tumbled down and went out.

We had a soup of lamb’s head and a lot of herbs picked by the wayside, onions, and a handful of peas someone had given to Theodore to eat raw. Then the brains and tongue boiled. Then the liver fried; a bowl of sheep’s cream and sugar. Some wine from Samos and coffee. We then strolled on the rocks by moonlight and complained to each other that we did not feel at all excited at the idea of our first night in a tent – indeed, I think all we felt was satisfaction at the idea of a clean, dry shelter.

Mathew spread his bed on brushwood in the kitchen. I undressed outside that I might bring in no fleas. As I had spread all our bedding in the sun, for once it was dry and our clothes in the morning were quite dry too. It rained in the night and Theodore had to go out about two to loosen the guys, and the north wind came on in the morning, so they had to be tightened again.

It is a cold dark day and the sea wild and black. We breakfasted outside. Theodore has gone to dig graves today and I am remaining at home enjoying great peace, nooked in where no one can stare. I am just going to have another read of the letters.

“But the best thing is quite perfect, a bowl shaped like a pineapple about 4 or 5 inches across…” (BM 1886,0310.6: Megarian bowl, black ware. Hellenistic, 3rd c. BCE – 1st c. BCE; © Trustees of the British Museum).

In the afternoon, or rather about 10, I went and with difficulty found the diggers, as they were in catacombs whose openings were quite invisible from above. They had already begun to find things, though many of the graves had evidently been opened in the Byzantine times. Most things were broken but still there were many whole and during the whole time we became possessed of many earthen plates (20 in one grave), the remains of copper mirrors and boxes, some glass things broken, and some broken but very pretty vases, etc. But the best thing is quite perfect – a bowl shaped like a pineapple about 4 or 5 inches across. Besides this, three round boxes and two lids made of lead, we think, a sort of button with a hanging ring, but we know not what metal, and some little twisted bits that seem to be gold. The prettiest lamp, quite perfect, has a word on the bottom and Theodore copied some inscriptions painted on the stucco of the vaults. We are altogether very much pleased with our success, and if we do not find things on Saría may return…

On Thursday morning (March 31st, I mean April 2nd), I did not go at all to the digging. To get there one must climb up, down, or over 17 walls, and as I did this three times the day before, besides wandering in search of tombs, I am sure I had a good deal of climbing. I was not much use as the men preferred grouping themselves round me when Theodore’s back was turned, talking to me, looking at my eyeglass, scissors, gloves, never before seen in Karpathos I am sure, and asking innumerable questions. In vain I suggest they should work but when the ‘aphentiko’, as they address Theodore, comes it is different.

“Besides this, three round boxes and two lids made of lead, we think, a sort of button with a hanging ring, but we know not what metal, and some little twisted bits that seem to be gold…” (From Mabel Bent’s notebook “her chronicle in the Sporades &c., 1885”, p. 78, archive of The Hellenic Society, London, CC).

Besides there was much to do in cleaning out the earth from the pots with very little water. I had to mind the camp while Mathew went to seek a meal in the sea. I had a visit from five women and girls who, without any ceremony, called me nothing but Verghinía. This is the first time I have not been called Kyria Verghinía, but I suppose these people really never have seen anyone superior to themselves and their only idea of a ‘Kyria’ must be the Blessed Virgin. They said ‘come with us Verghinía and we’ll give you cream’, but they terrified me by playing with the pots and I gave them no encouragement to remain and was glad when they left.

I packed our personal possessions and the more delicate ‘finds’ and after luncheon Theodore went off again and I broke up the camp with Mathew, though Theodore had sent me a man, which I told him was quite unnecessary. The man was busy all the time turning a lamb into food, which I fortunately did not find out till he was dead. By the by, Mathew had not slept a 2nd night in the kitchen, which was really as airtight as a nutmeg grater, but taken refuge in a cave about 30 feet above our heads.

We had three mules as we had two huge baskets of pots and seaweeds. About 4 pm, Theodore and his men came and everything was carried about three-quarters of a mile and they and I were loaded on the mules and we reached Elymbo by dark. Sunny day.

Good Friday was a fine sunny day and we unpacked the panniers, for we were quite too tired to look at anything on our arrival. It is very exciting work digging – first finding something, then is it whole? Then have we all the pieces? The men grind the edges trying to fit them, and any metal they cut with their knife. Fortunately they never saw the little boxes. Theodore found and pocketed them.

We cleaned as much as our limited means would allow (a milk jug and a Russian wooden bowl such as grocers have with 2 lbs of tea). We packed the pots into three boxes, all except a very large earthenware jug, two of which were found whole and one of which Theodore gave away. It is to be carried loose all the way home and now we empty our bowl into it. These two days before Easter are employed making bread and cakes with red eggs stuck into them and every oven is smoking…” (Bent, M.V.A. 2006: 99-125)

(We leave the Bents here; they now return to Olympos for the Easter celebrations…)

The Bents’ collections from Karpathos

BM 1886,0310.2: lekythos, white ground. Corinthian, ca. 500 BCE – 450 BCE. Unspecified site, Vroukountas (© Trustees of the British Museum).

Restrictions on the unauthorised removal of antiquities from Greece were already in force when the Bents were active in the Aegean (1880s). The position for Turkish areas was arguably more fluid, but from Mabel Bent’s notes in her diaries it is clear that had their ‘finds’ from Vourgounda been inspected on the waterfront, contemporary warehouses can still be seen at Pigadia, they would have been confiscated immediately. Just a few years later, the couple had considerable difficulties along the Turkish littoral, exiling them to distant regions (Africa, Arabia) under ‘British Protection’ where they could excavate freely.

The many crates, cartons and sacks containing the Bents’ acquisitions from Karpathos (including some very important village embroideries) left with the couple on the steamer Roúmeli on 21 April 1885. Mabel records in her diary: “The next excitement was getting the things at Pegadhia. I decided to remain on board and became a perfect queen-bee. I gave up moving at last for I was always followed. I eagerly watched the proceedings on shore. Mathew set off to run to the house where was a very hideous statue, more than the size of a baby, half a mile off. Theodore and the Turks sat down at the café… We mean to deposit it in bond at the customhouse of Syra with all the cases and things we do not want.”

Fierce storms forced the Roúmeli to seek shelter (as St Paul is said to have done) at Kali Limenes, southern Crete, before continuing via Kythera to Syra: “At Kythera a ‘manifesto’ was made and signed by the captain, saying he had picked us, and our cases, up in Turkey, and by the Kythera customs people to say we had not started from there… And now Thursday [23 April 1885] we are at Syra, all the things are in the customhouse, the great jars tied up to the wall.”

With, according to Mabel, all their acquisitions and paraphernalia (via Messina and Malta): “We reached home via Millwall Dock in safety with our 24 pieces of the most varied luggage, and I am more convinced than ever that there is no place like it.” Unfortunately she does not add a date, but it will have been around the middle of May 1885 – too late for them to attend the Hellenic Society meeting of 7 May, but Theodore did speak about the Karpathos finds at the Annual Meeting on 25 June (Bent, J.T. 1885: xlv). (For all Mabel Bent’s diary entries, see Bent, M.V.A. 2006: 99-125)

From Vroukountas Grave 1, Karpathos, BM 1886,0310.15: squat lekythos, red-figured ware. Attic, 430-400 BCE, purchased 1886 from Theodore Bent (© Trustees of the British Museum).

From Syra, Bent wrote a candid letter dated 24 April 1885 to Sir Charles Newton (see an earlier reference to him above), at that time Keeper of the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities at the British Museum. The use of the word ‘plunder’ is jarring : ‘We returned from Karpathos yesterday and had hoped to catch a steamer which would have brought us and our things straight to England. Unfortunately we shall have to wait a week at least, and as we have so much plunder we cannot take the Marseilles route… We were fairly successful in Karpathos, finding a large number of rock cut graves unopened which have produced pottery, etc., which, if not of the highest order, offer a good deal which I believe to be of a new character. I have likewise got a good-sized statue of one of those quaint figures which I got at Antiparos last year; it is of stone and nearly a yard long. It is decidedly uglier than any which have yet come to hand. Of quaint manners and customs I have got a fine collection, also of old Karpathiote dresses and jewelry… We had rather a rough time of it, Karpathos being very far behind the world in comforts, and decidedly we enjoyed ourselves best when living in our own tent. Mrs. Bent survives and is well and begs her kind regards. Yours very truly, J. Theodore Bent” (Archive of the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities, British Museum)

Items from Vroukountas purchased by the British Museum from Theodore Bent in 1886 (* = on display at the BM as of June 2026)

‘Grave 1’

‘Grave 2’

‘Grave 3’

1886,0310.10: epinetron, black-painted, yellow paste. Classical (Rhodian?), 5th c. BCE (late) – 4th c. BCE. Grave 3, purchased 1886 from JTB.

‘Grave 4’

Unspecified graves

(The Bents returned to London from Karpathos in May 1885, i.e. suggesting a period of deliberation and negotiation by both parties. Many finds referred to by Mabel in her diaries, and Theodore in his article for the Hellenic Society, i.e. the mysterious ’20 plates’, the large pithoi, etc., did not go to the BM and are presumably in various other collections today, unprovenanced. Over the centuries, how many other adventurers have come and gone among such islands, removing similar artefacts?)

Items from Vroukountas donated by Mabel Bent to the British Museum in 1926

Mabel Bent’s sister, Ethel Bagenal (1848-1930), to whom she left her estate on her death in July 1929, in turn, Ethel’s daughters were responsible for their aunt’s collections (The Bent Archive).

The Bents leased a fine townhouse near Marble Arch, London, at 13 Great Cumberland Place; Mabel continued to live there until her death in 1929. It was a veritable museum, if not a treasure chest, of decades of collecting and inherited items and clearly she wanted to hold on to certain souvenirs of her travels with Theodore, or items that were particularly decorative – including some discoveries from Vroukountas made during that obviously happy spring of 1885. Towards the end of her life she was inevitably thinking of what was to happen to her collections (alas, creating some sort of permanent home for them does not seem to have been considered). In her will, everything was left to her surviving sister, Ethel Bagenal (or effectively her two daughters, i.e. Mabel’s nieces). However in 1926 Mabel presented to the British Museum a large number of artefacts from all the regions they had travelled to, including the following Vroukountas pieces (they lack specific grave numbers):

1926,0410.42: kantharos, black-glazed ware. Attic, ca. 4th BCE. No grave specified, donated 1926 by MVAB.
1926,0410.41: kantharos, black-glazed ware. Attic, ca. 4th BCE. No grave specified, donated 1926 by MVAB.
1926,0410.40: salt-cellar, black-glazed ware. Hellenistic, ca. 3rd c. BCE. No grave specified, donated 1926 by MVAB.

(For an overview of the Bents’ collections see this summary)

The ‘Karpathos Lady’

“[At] Pegadia or ‘wells’ … there are evidences of pre-historic inhabitants, the graves of whom I was unfortunately unable to open owing to the presence of the Turkish authorities, but I was able to obtain a large stone figure of a female idol, similar to the smaller ones I found at Antiparos…” (Bent, J.T. 1885: 235)

This is the most bizarre of all the Bents’ acquisitions from any of their travels – an enigmatic stone figurine, still without a known parallel. The British Museum’s data record its findspot as Vroukountas, but the Bents purchased it from the Pigadia area; it left Karpathos whole, clandestinely in a blanket, but now is shown mended (in two parts).

Not currently exhibited (June 2026), it is a much travelled object, having featured in loan exhibitions to the Far East. (How Bent can think it resembled one of the marble figurines he recovered from Antiparos in 1884 is hard to explain.)

Bibliography

Bent, M.V.A. (1885) Her Chronicle in the Sporades &c., 1885, Archive of The Hellenic Society, London.
Bent, M.V.A. (1900) Southern Arabia, London.
Bent, M.V.A (2006) The Travel Chronicles of Mrs J Theodore Bent, Vol. 1, Oxford: 99-125.
Bent, J.T. (1885) ‘The Islands of Telos and Karpathos’. The Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. VI: 233-242.
Paton, W.R. (1887) Vases from Calymnos and Carpathos. Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. 8: 446-460.
Paton, W.R. (1889) Mycenaean tombs in Carpathos. The Classical Review, Vol. 3: 333.
Ross, L. (1845) Reisen auf den griechischen Inseln des agäischen Meeres, Vol. 3, Stuttgart: 50-69.

Further reading

Bent was very much taken with elements of Karpathian life and wrote several articles:

There are several (June 2026) spectacular videos of the location on YouTube, e.g.:

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Mabel Bent, Isabella Bird, and Hadji Abdullah the dragoman – Persia, 1889/90

The Bents’ route through Persia, March–May 1889. Drawn by Glyn Griffiths. © The Bent Archive. — *The Bents’ route through Persia, March–May 1889. Many of the sites were also visited by Isabella Bird the following year (Map: Glyn Griffiths, the Bent Archive).*

Alas, far safer then than now…

19th-century explorers in Persia, or anywhere else come to that, needed someone local – part Sancho Panza, part Passepartout – to ease things along: a translator, fixer, door-opener, guard, chaperone, cook, medic, accommodation officer, transport manager, therapist, whatever was required. The best could expect generous remuneration, the worst, summary dismissal!

Good or bad, these men (women dragomans please make yourselves known), would base themselves around ports of entry, where they might expect foreigners (themselves, of course, good or bad) in need of their services.

The British Residency at Bushire at the turn of the 19th century, a hotel for the Bents in 1889 when they stayed with the Ross family (Wikipedia).

One such port at the time of interest to us was Bushire, Persia (Iran, eastern shores of the Persian Gulf), administered by British officials – and let’s single out in particular (until 1891) the affable and highly respected Resident, Irishman Edward Charles Ross (1836-1913), who would open the Residency (with its tennis court, billiard room, and other facilities) to explorers (he was a keen antiquarian himself), arrange sight-seeing, lend his private yacht, and generally, with his wife and family, entertain.

Naturally enough, when celebrity explorers Theodore and Mabel Bent, after excavating the ‘Mounds of Ali‘ in Bahrain in early 1889, decided ‘then and there‘ to ride south-north through Persia as the first leg of their return to London, they promptly crossed the Gulf to Bushire and the ‘hospitable roof’ of the Ross family, arriving early February 1889. Mabel, as ever, surprised her hosts: “They were all amazed indeed when they heard of our resolution to ride those 1300 miles or more ‘with a lady’, for not more than 3 ladies have done this before, and 2, Mme. Dieulafoy and Mrs. Phelps, a very fat American, in man’s attire, and as the days go on they are still more amazed at seeing me sitting serenely wondering what saddle I shall have.” (Travel Chronicles of Mrs Theodore Bent, Vol. 3, 2010, pp.28-9)^note 1

Ross was also able to provide a dragoman, of sorts, for the Bents: “We had as our personal servant and interpreter combined … Hadji Abdullah, half Persian, half Arab. He was the best to be obtained, and his English was decidedly faulty… He had been a great deal on our men-of-war; he also took a present of horses from the Sultan of Maskat to the Queen [Victoria, in 1886], so that he could boast ‘I been to Home,’ and alluded to his stay in England as ‘when I was in Home’.” (Mabel Bent, Southern Arabia, 1900, p.2)

Serendipitously, this dragoman, Hadji Abdullah, whom the Bents employed to guide them on their way through Persia, leaving him over 1000 km away in Tabriz, was also hired (almost exactly a year later, early 1890) by that other great lady explorer Isabella Bishop (née Bird, 1831-1904), whom the Bents will have met frequently at the Royal Geographical Society and other gatherings of worthies. (Isabella was famously elected a Fellow in the first pick of lady travellers; Mabel was put forward for the second pick in 1893/4, just when the RGS voted to accept no more.)

The celebrated painter of horses, John Charlton (1849-1917) was on the scene to record the presentation of the Sultan of Muscat’s five Arab horses to Queen Victoria at Windsor in December 1886. It is possible that the dragoman Hadji Abdullah, employed by the Bents in 1889 and Isabella Bird in 1890, is represented in one of the faces we see. (‘The Graphic’, 18 December, 1886 (detail)).

The formidable Isabella Bird writes: “I lost no time in interviewing Hadji, — a Gulf Arab, who has served various travellers, has been ten times to Mecca, went to Windsor with the horses presented to the Queen by the Sultan of Muscat, speaks more or less of six languages, knows English fairly, has some recommendations, and professes that he is ‘up to’ all the requirements of camp life. The next morning I engaged him as ‘man of all work’, and though a big, wild-looking Arab in a rough abba and a big turban, with a long knife and a revolver in his girdle, scarcely looks like a lady’s servant, I hope he may suit me, though with these antecedents he is more likely to be a scamp than a treasure.” (Journeys in Persia and Kurdistan, Vol. 1, 1891, p. 5)

Bird, it seems, dispensed with Hadji’s services near Hamadan (August 1890), 200 km south of Tabriz, so his journey home to Bushire, assuming that was where he was based, was a good deal shorter than his trip back the previous year after his ride with the Bents! Interestingly, Bird makes no reference to the Bents in the letters home she eventually turned into her Persian book. It seems unlikely that Hadji made no mention at all of the British husband and wife explorers.

Jane Dieulafoy (1851-1916) French archaeologist, of whom Mabel Bent was, perhaps, a little envious (Wikipedia).

Note 1: Jane Dieulafoy (1851-1916) brilliant French archaeologist, excavator of Susa, had visited some of the Persian sites enjoyed by the Bents a few years earlier and had written several bestsellers about her travels in the region overall. Mabel was always ready, keen even, to criticise her! Mrs. Phelps remains untraced and it would be very good to know more about her. See also the Bents devoted Greek dragoman from Anafi in the Cyclades, Mathew Simos.
Return from Note 1

A compilation of the Bents’ Persian tales will appear in 2026.

“DWELLERS IN TENTS – Every man, says a philosopher, is a wanderer at heart. Alas! I fear the axiom would be truer if he had confined himself to stating that every man loves to fancy himself a wanderer, for when it comes to the point there is not one in a thousand who can throw off the ties of civilized existence – the ties and the comforts of habits which have become easy to him by long use, of the life whose security is ample compensation for its monotony. Yet there are moments when the cabined spirit longs for liberty.” (Gertrude Bell, Safar Nameh. Persian Pictures – A Book of Travel, London, 1894, p. 83)

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People come and go: to the memory of the kind William Pryor Binney, H.B.M. Consul on Syros and friend to the Bents

The kind William Pryor Binney (21 July 1839 – 12 March 1888), date unknown, presumably the 1870s, and perhaps wearing the medal of Chevalier from the King of Greece, or ‘the order of the Saviour and Order of the Iron Cross from the Emperor of Austria’. (From the ‘Genealogy of the Binney family in the United States’ 1886).

Wonderful to hear (3 Jan. 2026) that a team of volunteers has cleared up the charming but neglected Westerners’ Cemetery on Syros (Greek Cyclades), a small area that leads to the immaculately tended Commonwealth War Graves/Syra New British Cemetery, below Ano Syros. The original Westerners’ Cemetery site, including the memorial to William Pryor Binney, has been so badly maintained that the Commonwealth War Graves Commission even has a warning on its webpage, imploring those who want to visit to take great care: “Please remain within the pathway while accessing the CWGC plot due to danger of tripping on debris and being hit by falling stone from the damaged walls.” See the end of this article for photos.

People come and go; everyone travels; everyone leaves traces of their travels. You will find such a trace on a memorial in the rarely visited Westerners’ cemetery in Ermoupoli, on Cycladic Syros, near the junction of Taxiarchon and Katramadou, on the way to Ano Syros. The cross and monument of some grandeur is of fine Tinos marble; the inscription testifies to the trickiness of English lettering for Greek masons; it was expensive, and the deceased’s family wished to honour a significant man. There is no space for the word ‘kind’:

William Binney’s grave in the Westerners’ cemetery, Syros (detail) (The Bent Archive).

“To the Memory of William Pryor Binney, H.B.M. Consul, Divisional Manager Eastern Telegraph Company. Born in Halifax Nova Scotia, Canada, the 21th [sic] July 1839, died at Syra the 12th March 1888. The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Job 1, 21.”

The year of Binney’s birth, however, is given as 1840 in an arcane ‘Genealogy of the Binney family in the United States’, published by Charles James Fox Binney in 1886 (Albany, N.Y., J. Munsell’s Sons):

“William Pryor Binney, son of Stephen and Emily (Pryor) Binney, of Moncton, N[ew] B[runswick], was born July 21, 1840; married Polexine [Polyxena/Πολυξένη] Pateraki, daughter of the late George Pateraki[s], of Constantinople. Mr. Binney is the general manager of the submarine telegraph cable in the kingdom of Greece and Turkey, has held the office for twenty-five years past, and in 1884, lived at Syra, Greece. He is H.B.M. consul at Syra. Had no children in 1873. He had the title of Chevalier from the King of Greece and decoration of the order of the Saviour and order of the Iron Cross, from the Emperor of Austria.”

Stephen Binney (1805–1872), William’s father (from ‘Genealogy of the Binney family in the United States’, 1886).

The first Binney to surface, one captain John, of Nottinghamshire, set sail with his wife Mercy in 1678 or 1679, for Hull, Massachusetts. There, with John now a ‘fisherman’ and ‘gentleman’, the couple (with their six children) became the ‘ancestors of almost all of the name’. In the 19th century one of their descendants, Stephen Binney (1805–1872), a merchant of Halifax, and later first mayor, married Emily Pryor (1808 and still living in 1884); the couple had seven children, one of whom was our William Pryor Binney and Mabel remembers him for posterity as ‘kind’. As Halifax mayor, in early 1842 Stephen made the long Atlantic crossing to London with a message of congratulations on behalf of the city to Queen Victoria on the birth of her son (later King Edward VII). During his extended absence his business affairs at home suffered and he sought new opportunities, buying property near Moncton (New Brunswick). From his new base, Stephen Binney set up a successful wharf and shipyard, making a new start as a wholesaler, trading in timber and agricultural produce. With its access to the Bay of Fundy, and William’s father thrived as a merchant ship-owner, with a vessel that bore his own name, the ‘Stephen Binney’.

Pryor-Binney House, 5178 Morris Street, Halifax, Nova Scotia, B3J, Canada (Heritage Division NS Dept. of Tourism, Culture and Heritage, 2005)

It was Stephen’s father (William’s grandfather), Hibbert Newton Binney, who forged links initially with the Pryors, when the two families cooperated on the building of a fine house in Halifax in 1831, and which H.N. Binney then bought outright in 1834. The ‘Pryor-Binney House’ still stands at 5178 Morris Street, Halifax.

One of William’s brothers was Moncton’s head of Customs, Irwine Whitty Binney (b. 1841). It was probably Irwine, as prosperous clan head, who supervised in some way William’s funeral in 1888, in the quiet Westerners’ cemetery on Syros. William’s widow, Πολυξένη, being Orthodox, probably rests in the Greek cemetery a few 100 metres away. We don’t know when the couple married (1860s?); Polyxena’s father, George Paterakis, was from Constantinople, and probably of some standing. The Binneys had had no children by 1873.

The former premises of the Eastern Telegraph Company, Syros, now the Merchant Marine Academy of Syros for Marine Deck Officers.

And of William’s career? And how he came to Syros? Follow the money. William, as part of a very well-to-do and successful extended family who made their livings from commerce, merchant-shipping and the sea, was clearly ambitious to compete and strike out on his own; and quite prepared to travel and leave traces of his own. By the mid 1880s maritime nations were being linked by the invention of undersea cable-telegraphy, and the needs of the British Empire provided a booming market for companies in this sector. One of these was the Eastern Telegraph Company, a consolidation, in 1872, of a dynamic group of telegraphy businesses, involving some 23,000 miles of cabling by the late 1880s. This enterprise, of course, morphed eventually into today’s Cable and Wireless plc. A pivotal routing and operations hub for the Eastern Mediterranean, and British interests East, was based on Syros, and its capital, Ermoupoli, the main ‘port’ for all (‘new’) Greece before the growth of Pireaus around 1900. It was plain commercial sense that the Eastern Telegraph Company’s regional cable station and depot should be built on a (then) disconnected rock (Νησάκι), a hop from Ermoupoli’s seafront. The solid building (which probably housed Binney’s consular office too) still stands and now houses the island’s Merchant Marine Academy.

Announcement of William Binney’s appointment as ‘Her Majesty’s Consul in the Islands in the Greek Archipelago’ (‘The London Gazette’, 24145/5113, Tuesday, October 27, 1874).

William Binney held the important post of general manager for ETC’s Syros hub by 1883 at least, if not earlier; it is recorded that he had already been an employee for 25 years by around that date. His skillset obviously included diplomacy, and in 1874 we learn that “the Queen has been graciously pleased to appoint William Pryor Binney, Esq., to be Her Majesty’s Consul in the Islands in the Greek Archipelago, to reside in the Island of Syra [Foreign Office, September 5, 1874. The London Gazette, 24145/5113, Tuesday, October 27, 1874, and ‘The Morning Post’ of Wednesday, October 28, 1874].

Presumably this appointment helped Binney acquire his gongs, i.e. “the title of Chevalier from the King of Greece and decoration of the order of the Saviour and order of the Iron Cross, from the Emperor of Austria.” His duties would have included looking after his country’s interests and personnel in the region and reporting on the activities of potential rivals. Copies of communications between William and the UK Foreign Office can be found in the FO Volumes of the British Consuls in Greece, in the National Archive, Kew (i.e. 1881 FO 32/534; 1882 FO 32/546; 1892 FO 32/644; 1893 FO 32/653).

And as well as all this, Mabel Bent refers to William as not only fastidious, but ‘kind’ (she adds ‘so’ and underlines it). Theodore Bent met Binney first in Athens, in late November 1883. He became a friend it seems as well as Consul, providing the Bents with information and letters of introduction to contacts in the Cyclades generally. Theodore at this time was not particularly influential and it seems that Binney was being helpful to a British citizen as part of his consular duties. One of the contact names he slipped into Theodore’s pocket was Robert M.W. Swan, a Scottish miner on Antiparos. Swan was later to be central to Bent’s expedition to ‘Great Zimbabwe’ for Cecil Rhodes in 1891. But by then Binney was dead.

Let’s leave the last paragraphs on kind William Pryor Binney to Mabel Bent, as recorded in the pages of her Greek ‘Chronicles’. The final reference to his fatal illness comes as a shock:

A watercolour of Syros in the mid 19th century by Edward Lear; ‘the old sparkly pile’ he called it (diary entry for Wednesday, 6 April 1864).

“[Saturday, 1 December 1883] We had a quick but very rough passage, starting at 7 and getting [to Syros] about 3.30 a.m. Wednesday [28 November]. The ‘Pelops’ was quite new and very clean and I should have slept well but for the ﬂeas. We landed at Ermoupolis at 6.30 and sat on the balcony overlooking the port for 2 hours as there was no bedroom vacant, nor did we get one till 5 o’clock. Mr. John Quintana, H.B.M. Vice Consul on whom Theodore called, came and fetched us and we spent 2 hours at the Consulate in Mr. Binney, the Consul’s room, very large and nice and so tidy. Mr. Binney must be a most orderly man for everything was ticketed and docketed. Theodore called on him in Athens, says he is like a slight Greek, foreign accent and Greek wife.” [Mabel Bent’s Greek ‘Chronicles’, pages 7–8]

“[Tuesday, 18(?) December 1883]. Rode 1½ hour to the nearest point to Antiparos carrying only our night things and a card of introduction from Mr. Binney for Mr. R. Swan who has a calamine mine on this island.” [Mabel Bent’s Greek ‘Chronicles’, page 21]

“[Saturday, 22 March 1884] We fortunately got a room at the Hôtel d’Angleterre [Syros] and thoroughly enjoy ‘taking mine ease in mine inn’. We packed a box of our spoils for England and this afternoon I rode and the others walked to Ano or Upper Syra, a hideous place with a view over this barren island. We got very tired of Syra by Friday and as we found a kaïke of Kythnos or Thermiá we packed and prepared to start. But the strong Boreas would not permit ships to leave the port so after constant expectations up to Sunday morning the 23rd we gave up and went to church, a very poor little place and very ‘low’, according to the wishes of Mr. Binney the Consul. Afterwards we lunched with Mr. Binney, Mr. Quinney the parson, being there also. N.B. Mr. Binney’s clerk is Mr. Finney.” [Mabel Bent’s Greek ‘Chronicles’, page 54]

“[Thursday, 26 January 1888] We only got to Syra on Thursday. We landed

The Syra British Cemetery, Ermoupoli, near the junction of Taxiarchon and Katramadou, on the way to Ano Syros (photo: Alan King).

and found to our sorrow that our kind consul Mr. Binney was dreadfully ill.” [Mabel Bent’s Greek ‘Chronicles’, page 228]

“[Saturday, 25 February 1888] On Thursday… about 4 we left ‘The Town’ [Constantinople] in the ‘Alphée’ for Syra, picking up letters at the post on the way. We had no remarkable fellow passengers and reached Syra on Saturday morning about 4… We went to church on Sunday to a tidy little chapel, which they say will be closed if Mr. Binney is no longer there to keep it up.” [Mabel Bent’s Greek ‘Chronicles’, page 234]

William Binney’s grave in the Westerners’ cemetery, Syros (The Bent Archive).

Kind William Pryor Binney died 16 days after Mabel’s last reference to him, on 12 March 1888, of what she doesn’t say. (Appropriately, the new British Cemetery behind where he lies takes in the scattered Commonwealth war burials from the islands of the Cyclades.) He was not yet 50. Another William took over from him as Consul at Syros, W.H. Cottrell. People come and go; everyone travels; everyone leaves traces of their travels.

[The extracts from Mabel Bent’s diaries are taken from ‘The Travel Chronicles of Mrs J Theodore Bent‘, Vol. 1. Archaeopress, Oxford, 2006, and see also Theodore Bent’s ‘The Cyclades‘]

See also Alan King’s article on Binney and the Syra cemetery here.

[If you enjoyed reading about the likeable William Binney, you might enjoy a recent (2020) online article on him by Panagiotis Kouloumbis of Syros Today.]

The following three photographs (Jan. 2025) show the results of volunteers’ recent efforts “to clear the weeds, cut the bushes, throw the rubble and sweep”. The final resting place of Mabel Bent’s particular friend, William Pryor Binney (1839-1888), and the others buried there, is once again respected. Many thanks to all involved.

Syros Westerners’ Cemetery, recently cleaned by a group of volunteers over three days (Jan 2026). The large memorial on the right is the reverse side of William Pryor Binney’s grave. Reproduced with permission.

Syros Westerners’ Cemetery, recently cleaned by a group of volunteers over three days (Jan 2026). Reproduced with permission.

Syros Westerners’ Cemetery, recently cleaned by a group of volunteers over three days (Jan 2026). The doorway leads to the Commonwealth War Graves section of the cemetery. Reproduced with permission.

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Gold, Frankincense, and Mabel – The Bents at Christmas

*One of the pottery incense-burners the Bents brought back from the Wadi Hadramaut in 1893/4 (As1926,0410.37,* © The Trustees of the British Museum; CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).

The pottery incense-burner, intended for frankincense and other aromatic resins, that the Bents brought back from the Wadi Hadramaut in 1893/4. It remained in Mabel Bent’s personal collection until 1926, when it was donated to the British Museum with several others (As1926,0410.37-41).

The Bents at Christmas

For celebrity explorers, the Bents preferred to be homebirds come Christmas, swapping solar topees for deerstalkers, and quitting their London townhouse at 13 Great Cumberland Place for their country residence at Sutton Hall, Macclesfield (northern England), or Ireland (Mabel’s family home at Newtonbarry, Co. Wexford). Of their nearly 20 years of explorations (in the 1880s and ’90s), together, they were only out of Britain on December 25th, it seems, for the years 1882 (Chios, then a Turkish island), 1883 (Naxos, Greek Cyclades), 1891 (steaming home from Cape Town, South Africa), 1893 (Wadi Hadramaut, Yemen), 1894 (Dhofar, Oman), 1895 (Suez, Egypt), and 1896 (Sokotra island, Yemen). Theodore Bent never lived to celebrate another, he was to die in London in May 1897, aged just 45.

From Schoff’s ‘Periplus’ (1912), with its many references to the travels of the Bents (archive.org).

The Bents’ 1893-4 adventures around Christmas time took them to the fabled lands of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, all gifts associated with Theodore’s theories of trade links and contacts between the populations of Southern Arabia and the various regions around today’s Ethiopia, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe. In particular, it was the famous trade in the fragrant gum that dribbles from several species of Boswellia trees (frankincense), and its trade routes – especially the branch that began in Dhofar, Oman – that fascinated the explorer; he wrote several articles on the subject, i.e. ‘Exploration of the Frankincense Country, Southern Arabia‘ for The Geographical Journal (Vol. 6 (2) (Aug), 109-33), and ‘The Land of Frankincense and Myrrh‘ for The Nineteenth Century (Vol. 38 (224) (Oct), 595-613). (It is quite possible that the Dhofar trail reached north up to Bethel (Beitin) in the modern West Bank, and that Mabel, as an offering to her dead partner, left there, in the early 1900s, the notorious pottery seal (now lost) from a sack of frankincense destined for western lamps. The couple had acquired the seal as their caravan moved east along the Wadi Hadramaut in 1893/4.)

Theodore’s above articles are well worth the read, but let’s let Mabel add some 1894 Christmas and New Year details from her diary, her ‘Chronicles‘ she calls them, written as the couple travel along coastal Dhofar:

“About 6 came, very smart with bourkas on their faces…” Mabel Bent’s doodle in her ‘Chronicle’ as she writes. (Hellenic Society Archive, London).

“Christmas Eve [Monday, 1894]. On waking, the smaller boy came to kiss my hand and before I was up the ladies said they were coming. I was afraid to put them off. First I sat up and put on a jacket, and finding time allowed, I put on a skirt and got up. Combed down my hair and feeling sure that stockings would not be missed, I sat with bare feet, refreshing my memory with civil speeches. About 6 came, very smart with bourkas on their faces a sort of square frame of gold braid and spangles, with a black stick down the middle. They had a great deal of coarse jewellery on with mock pearls and very bad turquoises.

Christmas Day [Tuesday, 1894]. We rose with the sun and walked off to a mass of ruins about a mile off. There was a great deal of vegetation and sheets of a most lovely creeper with a large flower, white when new, pink when older, and then there comes a red pear-shaped fruit, with hot seeds in it. The ruins are Himyaritic and reminded us of Adulis and Koloe in Abyssinia… returning we sat in a grove of coconut palms and drank much water from the nuts, which were showered from the trees in rather a terrific way. The men stuck their throwing sticks in the ground and by banging the nuts down on the points skinned them.

[Wednesday] December 26th [1894]. I was asked to go down to the harem early. The ladies had not so much finery on. They were most kind and gave me many things to eat, coffee, awfully sweet, and sherbet of orgeat, ditto, halweh and pahpa and nutmegs broken up and some seeds and some leaves called tamboul, and chunam, and things I did not eat for I do not want my teeth to become red… We had 2 more days of waiting and, at last, were told we should positively start on Saturday 28th and were expecting at least to start in the evening, but when at length all the camels were got together there were no ropes, sticks to tie the loads to, or any other thing, so we had to wait till next day.

The expeditions — Map showing the expeditions of Theodore & Mabel Bent, 1883-1897 (drawn by Glyn Griffiths; (c) The Bent Archive).

Leave Dhofar. Sunday 29th December [1894]. We set off at 12. There was the greatest confusion over the loading; neither men not beasts were accustomed to deal with anything but sacks of frankincense. The camels roared incessantly, got up before they were finished and shook off their loads, or would not kneel, or ran away loaded, and then there was a great deal of unloading and abandoning everything and shouting and quarrelling and much difficulty about making up saddles for us. Theodore and Imam Sheriff and Hassan and I each have a separate camel and 6 of the servants ride in pairs while one walks.

New Year’s Eve [Monday, 1894]. Did not get off till 10, though we breakfasted before sunrise… Theodore’s camel was a very horrid one and sat down occasionally and you first get a violent pitch forward, then an equally violent one back and a 2nd forward; this is not a pleasant thing to happen unexpectedly… We were all most dreadfully stiff and tired and again too late to do anything in the way of unpacking more than just enough for the night. The quantities of flowers Theodore has already got must, I think, already exceed all the 150 of last year [in the Wadi Hadramaut]. There are a great many lobàn trees, or rather shrubs (frankincense)…” (extracts from The Travel Chronicles of Mabel Bent, Vol. 3, pages 249-50, Archaeopress 2010)

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“‘Then and there’ – Theodore and Mabel Bent in Persia, 1889” (forthcoming 2026)

سفری در ایران با تئودور و میبل بنت

While travel for some in ‘Persia’ is still clearly so precarious, why not ride instead, south-north through Iran, with the Bents – on mules, ponies, camels, oxen, and in assorted carts and carriages?

Announcing: “‘Then and there’ – Theodore and Mabel Bent in Persia, 1889″ (forthcoming 2026)

Extracts will appear from time to time on this page

Mabel’s pond at Manzaria/Manzarieh, 30 km north of Qom, Iran (Google Maps).

Mabel writes in her Chronicle: Tuesday, 9 April 1889, Manzaria/ Manzarieh, 30 km north of Qom [34.89018460145364, 50.82060309976168]: “After this, let me say that we had a very pleasant afternoon of peace and contemplation of a round pond with a stone coping on which numerous travellers sat on their heels for hours and hours like so many big frogs just got out of the water…”

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2000-2025: Twenty-five years of Bent researches – our want list!

Map and title page of Bent’s bestseller on the Cyclades (1885) (archive.org)

2025 brings the 25th anniversary of our researches into the lives and travels of celebrity explorers Theodore and Mabel Bent, studies that began with a reprint (Oxford, 2002) of Bent’s The Cyclades (now 140 years old in 2025).

Over these twenty-five years of following the Bents (five more than they were granted for their travels together) in the Levant, Africa, and Arabia, a number of questions remain unanswered – awaiting the discoveries of future explorers. Our want list in fact:

No. 1) The Missing Chronicle – Ethiopia 1893?

Mabel Bent’s ‘Chronicles’ in the archives of the Hellenic Society, London. All except for the missing notebook covering the Bents’ trip to ‘Abyssinia’ in 1893 (the Bent Archive).

“When I returned, after inspecting the convent, to my dismay [Mabel] was gone, and what happened she thus tells in her Chronicle…”

Where is Mabel Bent’s missing travel diary (‘Chronicle’) covering the couple’s journey to ‘Abyssinia’ in 1893? We know from Bent that it provided material for his book on the area – The Sacred City of the Ethiopians (1893, see especially pp. 45, 47 for the quote above; and see Travel Chronicles of Mabel Bent, Vol. 3 (Oxford, 2012, pp. 175-207)). It consists, probably, of a single notebook as the couple’s trip there was curtailed; it is the only one apparently not with the others in the archives of the Hellenic Society, London (presented before or after Mabel’s death (1929) by her niece Violet Ethel folliott (1882-1932)). Its interest to students of the region cannot be overstated, but the chances are as slim as Mabel’s notebooks themselves that it will ever turn up, but who knows?

No. 2) The fabled clay ‘Bethel Seal/Stamp’?

The clay stamp/seal acquired by the Bents in the Wadi Hadramaut in 1894 (Bent Archive).

Where is the fabled clay seal/stamp bought by the Bents in the Wadi Hadramaut in 1894, and which possibly Mabel later concealed at ‘Bethel’ (Beitin, West Bank, 5 km northeast of Ramallah) in the early 1900s in Theodore’s honour? For Mabel, Bethel represented the terminus of one of the frankincense trails from Yemen and Oman, via the Wadi Hadramaut, regions that inspired the couple from 1894 until Bent’s death in 1897. What more appropriate gesture by his grieving widow than to bury the seal (presumably a trader’s mark on a consignment of resin) as a tribute and private memorial (see their Southern Arabia (1900, London, Chapters VI-XXII) and Travel Chronicles of Mabel Bent, Vol. 3 (2010, Oxford, pp. 129-237)). Found (or its double), by archaeologists in the 1950s, where is it now?

No. 3) When Mabel met Theodore?

Mabel Bent in her wedding dress, by T. Fall, 9 Baker Street, Portman Square, London. (If the photo predates the August 1877 ceremony, unlikely, she would still be Mabel Virginia Anna Hall-Dare) (Bent Archive).

“Before she was married she travelled in many countries including Spain and Italy, and met her husband in the Arctic region – i.e., Norway; from her earliest years having a wish to see those distant lands where the ordinary traveller fears to tread, ‘And how fortunate that my husband’s tastes should be exactly the same as my own,’ said Mrs. Bent, as we talked of the days when she had no idea her wishes would be so fully gratified.” (The Gentlewoman – The Illustrated Weekly Journal for Gentlewomen, No. 175, Vol. VII, Saturday, 11 November 1893, pp. 621-622)

How, when, and where exactly in Norway did the young Theodore and Mabel meet? They were distant cousins via the Lambarts of Yorkshire and County Meath. No documentation has surfaced, we only have a throwaway line from Mabel saying that’s where they set eyes on each other first. It would have been in the early 1870s, Theodore having come down from Oxford. They were married fairly soon thereafter in the little church of Staplestown, Co. Carlow, Ireland, on 2 August 1877, and began their 20 years of travel together (Levant, Africa, Arabia) with a honeymoon in Italy.

No. 4) Bent’s unpublished watercolours?

‘Kalenzia, Isle of Socotra, 1897’. Watercolour (detail), by Theodore Bent (private collection, reproduced with permission).

How can the known, but unpublished, Bent watercolours (of ‘Mashonaland’, the Greek Islands, Arabia, etc.) be preserved and exhibited? Important historical records, they should be made accessible to the scholar-traveller. They do turn up from time to time. One, of a scene from Socotra, was auctioned recently and is now in a private collection and reproduced with kind permission.

No. 5) Mabel’s photographs?

A unique photograph (1890) taken by Mabel Bent in Cilicia. It was found inside one of her notebooks (The Hellenic Society).

Where are all Mabel’s photographs? Beginning in 1885, Mabel was the expedition photographer on the couple’s adventures. Of the thousands of plates/prints, all that remain are the images reproduced in Bent’s three monographs (1892, 1893, 1900) and some few of his published articles. Mabel’s work did get transferred to lantern slides for Bent’s lectures and they were stored in the archives of the Royal Geographical Society, London, before being discarded in the 1950s, being (then) beyond the powers of conservation – a huge loss. Tantalizingly, there is a paper print of a monument from Turkey’s western coastal area, tucked inside one of Mabel’s notebooks.

No. 6) ‘The Bent Turkish Embroidery Bequest’?

Detail from Bent Collection embroideries – PRSMG 1970.4 (Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston).

The Bents were great collectors of costumes, fabrics, and embroideries (to keep or sell). A mystery today is the provenance of the ‘Bent Turkish Embroidery Bequest‘ (more modest than it sounds) in the Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston (UK). It would be fascinating to discover how the items found their way from the Eastern Mediterranean to Lancashire. (Only 80 km southeast of Preston is the Bents’ country house – Sutton Hall, Sutton; perhaps an answer lies in this direction.)

No. 7) Robert McNair Wilson Swan (1858-1904)?

Neolithic stone celt from Perak (Malaysia), donated by Swan to the British Museum after 1900 (Asset number 1613672945, © The Trustees of the British Museum).

Tuesday, 18 December 1883: “Met Mr. Swan who more than fulfilled our warmest hopes.” (Travel Chronicles of Mabel Bent, Vol. 1 (p. 21; Oxford, 2006). Is there a photograph anywhere of the Bents’ great friend Robert M.W. Swan? The couple met the latter when he was a mining engineer on the Cycladic island of Antiparos in 1883. In 1891 he joined the travellers for their investigations at Great Zimbabwe, where he undertook surveying duties, contributing a chapter to Bent’s Ruined Cities of Mashonaland (1892) (and see Travel Chronicles of Mabel Bent, Vol. 2 (2012, Oxford, pp. 17-175)). A decade later he was working for various mining companies on the Malay Peninsular, only to die of complications following liver surgery in Kuala Lumpur in 1904 (c. 45 years, the same age as Bent on his death coincidentally). No archive seems to have a likeness of this driven, capable Scotsman and we would like very much to see him, or learn of his final resting place.

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Mabel Bent: Her ‘Chronicles’ covered…

Some of Mabel Bent’s ‘Chronicles’ in the archive of the Hellenic Society, London (photo: the Bent Archive).

[Unless otherwise referenced, original Mabel Bent material courtesy of The Hellenic Society/School of Advanced Study, University of London (reproduced under Creative Commons: Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0)]

The Hellenic Society’s holdings of the notebooks and Chronicles of celebrity explorers Theodore and Mabel Bent have now been digitised and are available here via the School of Advanced Study, University of London.

The Bents had almost twenty years of travel adventures together (1877-1897), being interested in many fields of ethnology, archaeology, and geography in the Levant, Africa, and Arabia.

What follows is a quick glance at the subfusc covers of Mabel’s diaries (or ‘Chronicles’ as she called them) 1883-1897. Not all of them, however, i.e. her (alas lost?) diary of the pair’s trip to Ethiopia in 1893, and Mabel’s solo journey to Egypt in 1898, as a widow, depressively labelled by her: ‘A lonely useless journey’. (Click for the full itineraries and details of all the couple’s travels together.)

Mabel Bent’s travel notebooks:

Plate 1: Mabel Bent’s ‘Chronicle’ covers: 1883/4 to 1897 (upper: 1, 2; lower: 3, 4) (The Hellenic Society).

1) The Cyclades: beginning “Mabel Bent, her Chronicle in The Kyklades 1883-4. Dedicated to my Sisters and my Aunts”, the first of Mabel’s Chronicles (and the only one not to have a pasted front label) is written in a dark-red leather, lined and columned, accounts book (£.s.d.); it has marbled endpapers and edges and measures 175 x 110 mm. Mabel completes 94 of its 130 leaves.^note 1

2) The Dodecanese: beginning “Mabel V.A. Bent her Chronicle in the Sporades, etc. 1885”, the second of Mabel’s Chronicles is written in a blue marbled, board covered notebook (185 x 120 mm) with marbled endpapers and edges. Mabel’s initials are inked on the front. There are 170 lined pages and Mabel fills 115 of them. The pasted cover label reads: ‘Egypt Greece 1885 –’.

3) The Eastern Aegean: inexplicably beginning “My Fourth Chronicle 1886”, the third of Mabel’s travel diaries is written in a dark-red leather notebook (180 x 115 mm) with marbled endpapers and edges. near the edges of the covers there are two parallel and scored lines. There are 192 lined pages and Mabel uses all but 10 of them. The pasted cover label reads: ‘Istambul [sic] Greek Islands 1886 –’.^note 2

4) The Northern Aegean: beginning simply “1887”, Mabel’s fourth Chronicle is written in a dark-red leather notebook (180 x 115 mm) with marbled endpapers and edges. near the edges of the covers there are two parallel and scored lines, the corners including a stylized clover design. There are 85 lined pages and Mabel has covered 75 of them. The pasted cover label reads: ‘Greece 1887’.^note 3

Plate 2: Mabel Bent’s ‘Chronicle’ covers: 1888 and 1889 (upper: 5, 6; lower: 7, 8) (The Hellenic Society).

5) The Turkish coast: beginning “My fifth Chronicle” (the correct numbering is restored), Mabel’s 1888 diary is written in a dark-red leather book (180 x 115 mm), with gold lines on the spine and covers; the endpapers and edges are marbled. Near the edges of the covers there are two parallel and scored lines. There are 192 pages of lined paper, of which Mabel has used 182. This expedition involved a happy cruise along Turkey’s south-western shores – “…a paradise for archaeologists and tortoises…” The pasted cover label reads: ‘Turkey Russia 1888’.

6, 7, 8) Bahrain and Iran (in 3 vols): beginning “Persia 1889”, this adventure, including a marathon ride, south-north, through present-day Iran, and well deserving of a documentary on its own, necessitated three notebooks. Mabel adds in the third volume (8) that it is her 6th Chronicle. Notebook 6 is plain and bound in dark-red leather (180 x 115 mm). The endpapers and edges are marbled; near the edges of the covers there are two parallel and scored lines. There are 148 lined pages, of which Mabel has used all, including the endpapers. Notebook 7, perhaps from the same retailer, is also a plain, dark-red leather volume (180 x 115 mm); the endpapers and edges are marbled; there are 148 pages, of which Mabel has used all, including the endpapers. Notebook 8 is from a different source; it is a plain, dark-red, leathered-covered book (170 x 110 mm); there are 184 pages, plus endpapers, of which Mabel has used 50; the edges are speckled with blue wavy lines. The three pasted cover labels read: ‘1889 no 1 –’; ‘Persia 1889 (2)’; ‘1889 No. 3’. ^note 4

Plate 3: Mabel Bent’s ‘Chronicle’ covers: 1890 and 1891 (upper: 9, 10; lower: 11, 12) (The Hellenic
Society).

9) Turkey: beginning “My Seventh Chronicle ‘Rugged Cilicia’ 1890”, this Chronicle is written in a dark-red leather book (185 x 120 mm). The endpapers and edges are marbled. The paper is lined; there are 90 pages and Mabel has filled 89 of them. Near the edges of the covers there are two parallel and scored lines. The pasted cover label reads: ‘Cilicia 1890’.^note 5

10, 11) South Africa: beginning “1891. My Eigth [sic] Chronicle To Zimbabye in Mashonaland”, Mabel uses two notebooks for the couple’s notorious 1891 travels to and from South Africa, occupying the energetic duo for most of 1891. Notebook 1 (10) is a plain, dark-red leather volume (180 x 120 mm). The endpapers and edges are marbled. The paper is lined; there are 180 pages, plus endpapers, of which Mabel has used all. The volume ends in early August 1891 as the party approaches the year-old Fort Salisbury (modern Harare, where Theodore’s watercolours of the trip are now seemingly inaccessible in the Archives). The second notebook narrates the homeward journey, via Umtali (Mutare) and the Pungwe River to Beira in Mozambique. The second volume (11) does not quite match its predecessor; it is plain and in dark-red leather (175 x 115 mm). The endpapers and edges are marbled. The paper is lined; near the edges of the covers of both books are two parallel and scored lines. There are 164 pages, of which Mabel has used all but six. The pasted cover labels read, respectively: ‘Central Africa No 1’ and ‘1891 No 2 Africa Central’.^note 6

[Mabel’s notebooks, for what would have been her ‘9th Chronicle’, relating their subsequent expedition in 1893 to Ethiopia, are, alas, lost]

12) Wadi Hadramaut (Yemen): beginning, defiantly, ‘Hadramout’, with no Chronicle number (it would be No. 10), Mabel uses two notebooks to narrate their famous 1893-4 travels to the Wadi Hadramaut in Yemen, Southern Arabia (the start of a trio of ill-fated expeditions). The first volume includes the party’s preparations in Aden (December 1893). It is a plain, dark-red leather volume (180 x 115 mm); near the edges of the covers of both books are two parallel and scored lines. The endpapers and edges are marbled. The paper is lined; there are 146 pages, plus endpapers, of which Mabel has used all. The pasted cover label reads: ‘Hadramaut 1893 to 94 No 1 A’.

Plate 4: Mabel Bent’s ‘Chronicle’ covers: 1894 to 1897 (upper: 13, 14; lower: 15, 16) (The Hellenic Society).

13) Wadi Hadramaut (Yemen): beginning “Continuation of My Chronicle in the only very moderately Blest Arabia 1894”, Mabel’s second notebook here concludes their curtailed trek into the Wadi Hadramaut, and sees the pair reach London again in April 1894. It is a plain, dark-red leather volume (180 x 115 mm). The endpapers and edges are marbled. Near the edges of the covers there are two parallel and scored lines. The paper is lined; there are 146 pages, of which Mabel has used just 34. The cover label reads: ‘Hadramaut – no 2. A 1894 -’. (It appears that the year has been altered from ‘1884’.)

14) Muscat and Dhofar: beginning just “Saturday 15th December, 1894. The Residency, Muscat”, Mabel again gives no Chronicle number (it would be No. 11) to this notebook covering the couple’s aborted and dispiriting expedition into the Wadi Hadramaut, this time from the east. It is a dark-red leather volume with gilt bordering (180 x 115 mm). The endpapers and edges are marbled. The paper is lined; there are 172 pages, plus endpapers, of which Mabel has used just 68, indicating a frustrated expedition. The pasted cover label reads (confusingly): ‘1894-5 Hadramaut’.

15) Red Sea (west coast): beginning “1895 The Chronicle of my Thirteenth Journey”, although in fact, and ominously, it should be referenced her as her twelfth, this penultimate adventure has the couple travelling from Suez, south to Massowa (Mitsiwa) and back, by dhow. On the way home, via Athens, they attend the first modern Olympic Games. Mabel keeps her diary in a lined, dark-red leather book (175 x 115 mm), near the edges of the covers there are two parallel and scored lines. The endpapers are marbled; there are 152 pages in the notebook but Mabel only completes 62. The cover label reads: ‘1895-6 Suez Kourbat Athens’.^note 7

16) Sokotra, Aden: Beginning (with the ‘c’ altered to a ‘k’) “The Island of Sokotra 1896-7”, Mabel’s unnumbered diary (it is, in fact, the unlucky 13th Chronicle) details the couple’s final journey together, and is to witness them at the end both desperately ill with malaria (Theodore dies in London a few days after their return in May 1897, ending nearly twenty years of hitherto inseparable travel). The notebook is a dark-red leather volume (180 x 115 mm), with gold edging to the spine and covers. The endpapers and edges are marbled. The paper is lined; there are 178 pages, plus endpapers, of which Mabel has used 146. The pasted cover label reads: ‘Isle [of] Socotra 1896-7’. ^note 8

Notes

Four of Mabel’s opening flourishes to her ‘Chronicles’. The 1895 notebook was actually the account her 12th journey, making the ‘Sokotra’ journal her unlucky 13th – Theodore died of malarial complications a few days after returning to London, 5th May 1897. (The Hellenic Society).

Note 1: The Bents had first toured the Eastern Mediterranean, and some of the Greek and Turkish islands, including the Cyclades, in early 1883, but it seems Mabel did not keep a travel diary at that time, more’s the pity, although her later diaries make reference to it (i.e. see The Travel Chronicles of Mabel Bent, Vol.1, 2006, Oxford, p.52). Mabel’s first diary notebook was, in fact, one of Theodore’s, he has written in the back ‘J.T. Bent. Acct. Book. Oct. 13th 1871’: he would have been nineteen and about to go up Wadham College, Oxford, to read history. Perhaps, just before setting out for their second trip to Greece in November 1883, one of the couple hit upon the idea that Mabel should keep a record of the trip, and a simple, dark-red leather notebook that has been lying around for twelve summers is the first thing that comes to hand. But from this inconsequential idea flows a nearly twenty-year stream of travel diaries, unparalleled in their scope, and addictive in their appeal.
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Note 2: Still inside this volume is a letter from Mabel’s friend, Mrs H.R. Graham, who writes: “Why oh why don’t you publish it? It simply bristles with epigrams and I am certain would be a great success! You ought to blend the Chronicles into one and I am sure everyone would buy it.’ (This is now possible of course.). The H.R. Grahams were old friends, Graham seconding Theodore’s application for election as a Royal Geographical Society Fellow on 16 June 1890.
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Note 3: Included in the little volume remains a melancholy letter from the unhappy wife of a minor functionary in Skopje. She implores Mabel to visit: ‘Monday morning. My dear Madam, You would really do me a great favour if you would spend an hour or two with me today. Ours is rather a rough kind of home, but I can offer you a cup of tea. I think if you only knew how hard it is for an educated woman to be in exile at such a place as Uskub [Skopje], without either congenial society or habitual surroundings, you would come out of charity. May I fetch you about 4? With compliments to your husband, Faithfully yours, Florence K. Berger’”. Presumably by the end of tea Mabel would have learned that Mrs Berger was herself, in fact, a published author, having written about an earlier stay in Bucharest – A Winter in the City of Pleasure (London, 1877).
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Note 4: The first in the trilogy of notebooks elucidating the Bents’ journey from London, via Karachi and Bushire, to Bahrain; then their extraordinary overland ride, zigzagging north-south, through Persia (Iran). The second volume is a record from just north of Persepolis as far as modern Tabriz. Inside the cover Mabel has written her name and address (as she does for most of her notebooks): “Mabel V.A. Bent, 13 Great Cumberland Place, W., 1889”, and has the following note: “The state of the edge of this book is caused by a mule’s rolling in the saddlebags, which broke the butter tin so that the melted butter got into everything.” It seems that Mabel only set out with these two notebooks; aware of space problems, she contracted her usually neat handwriting, making the transcription of these volumes difficult in places. The third volume tells of the journey home – from Tabriz to London. This third book was bought locally (in Tabriz) and is of poorer quality than the other two that came from London. The binding is poor and some sheets are loose. Tucked into this book is a miscellaneous bill from the ‘Hôtel de l’Europe’, Vladikavkas (capital of North Ossetia-Alania, Russia).
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The ‘Mandragora’ leaf (*M. officinarum) Mabel pins to a page within her 1890 notebook (her 5th Chronicle) during the couple’s travels along the Turkish littoral. (The Hellenic Society)*

Note 5: This was another of the Bents’ enjoyable, carefree even, expeditions (1890, in which they famously discover the ancient site of Olba along the way). On several occasions in this Chronicle (but in no other within the 15-year series) Mabel has leaves occasional spreads of blank pages “for meditations”, suggesting rare hints of intimacy, girlishness too – “Theodore says I can keep the pages I have left out for meditations!” As an example, a ‘mandragora’ leaf remains pinned to one of her pages: “This is said to be a leaf of mandragora or mandrake. I have been given some roots and seen a good many, which are certainly most extraordinary, but I cannot help thinking they are helped into their human form with a knife and then earthed over. Some say after being cut they are planted again to grow a little but as they grow very deep I do not think that likely. I shall believe in them better when I have seen one dug up.” Importantly, this notebook also has tucked within it an extremely rare paper print from one of Mabel’s photographs in the field; no others have appeared to date.
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An extremely rare paper print of a photograph taken in 1890 by Mabel Bent at the site of an inaccessible inscription near Olba in Cilicia; it was tucked into her notebook of that year: “A ladder was needed to read this [inscription], so one had to be built and very cleverly it was managed… a couple of trees were cut and notches cut in the back of them and then some large sticks just laced on with one loop which hitched into the notches. As one side was about a foot and a half longer than the other it had a queer and dangerous twist.” (‘Travel Chronicles of Mabel Bent’, Vol. 1. Oxford, 2006, p.281) (photo: The Hellenic Society).

Note 6: This notebook records the couple’s homeward journey from Great Zimbabwe, via Fort Salisbury (modern Harare) and the Pungwe River to Beira in Mozambique. The volume differs from its predecessor; it was perhaps obtained from a stationer’s en route. The top of page two is stained and Mabel has written next to it ‘Hydrochloric Acid’ – presumably part of the photographic paraphernalia from her mobile ‘darkroom’; she was again expedition photographer.
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Note 7: By ‘Kourbat’ Mabel is referring to the Wadi Kurbab district on the southern Sudanese coast, including the so-called Halaib Triangle. Appointed by the British authorities in Cairo to keep an eye on the expedition was the young Capt. N.M. Smyth (1868-1941) (later Major General Sir Nevill Maskelyne Smyth, VC, KCB). Also with the party, paying his way, was Hugh Alfred Cholmley (1876-1944) of Place Newton, Rillington, Yorkshire; Hugh was a shooter on the trip – photographs and wildlife, especially birds: “While here [near Sawakin al-Qadim] we got a few Sand-Grouse, two young Shrikes, and an Egyptian Goatsucker. One day while near the sea I saw two black Ducks, which I am sure were Velvet Scoters – the large yellow beak and black plumage showed distinctly, but they were too far off for a shot.” (Cholmley, A.J. (1897). ‘Notes on the Birds of the Western Coast of the Red Sea’, Ibis 39(2): 196-209). The last four pages of this diary narrate the couple’s short stay in Athens on the way home, including a visit to the first Olympic Games of the modern era (April 6–15, 1896). The notebook has its cost price written in pencil in the front: one shilling (c. £2.50).
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The Bents' hospital bill from Aden — *The Bents’ hospital bill from Aden, 1897. Folded into her notebook of that year, it is signed by their Goanese physician, Dr Dias (The Hellenic Society).*

Note 8: Also, as a (paying) guest, on this trip to Sokotra was (later Sir) Ernest Nathaniel Bennett (1865-1947), academic, politician, explorer and writer; he made the sensible decision not to join the party’s onward trek into the Aden hinterlands. Assisting the Bents on this journey was their long-term dragoman, and friend, Mathew Simos from the Cycladic island of Anafi; from the time they met (the winter of 1883/4) there were only three adventures in which he did not take part: 1889 (Persia), 1891 (Great Zimbabwe), and 1895 (the Bents’ second visit to the Hadramaut). Noteworthy in this Chronicle are several rare inclusions: a unique ‘contract’ for the party’s passage from Socotra back up to Aden; a hospital bill; and a letter from the Aden authorities regarding their onward journey. Mabel was too ill to update her diary for their last few days east of Aden, but she made an effort, the relaxed style of the experienced traveller in the Sokotra sections contrasting with the feverishness and despair of what she was able to write. Her last diary entry in the field was 16 March 1897. She concluded her memoir later, but does not indicate where or when, ending her final journey with Theodore with the lines: “At last a M.M. [steamer] came from Madagascar with room for us, so one afternoon I was taken up and an ambulance litter was brought beside my bed and I was laid in it and carried down to the sea…”
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[A note on the labels pasted on the front covers. All Mabel’s Chronicles shown above, except for the 1883/4 volume (The Cyclades), appear to be cut from printed paper featuring a distinctive, narrow strip of zigzags. This is curious (as the notebooks cover a period of fifteen years or so), suggesting perhaps that the labels were pasted on at a later date – at around the same time? The handwriting could be Mabel’s, or that of her niece Violet Ethel ffolliott (1882-1932), who gave the notebooks to the Hellenic Society (Mabel died in 1929), or even a cataloguer at the Hellenic Society.]

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The Bents and the Raj

The recent death of Ratan Tata (28 December 1937 – 9 October 202) has prompted this reposting of an article (Jan 2021) linking this famous family to Mabel Bent. Ratan was the son of Naval Tata, who was adopted by Ratanji Tata, the son of Jamshedji Tata; the latter, of course, was the founder of the Tata Group. Mabel attended Jamshedji’s funeral in Surrey (UK) on 24 May 1904; her association with the family remains unknown.

India, and all that the name evokes…

“And now I think we are among the most remarkable people in this world. Fancy going all the way to Bombay and departing thence without ever landing!” (from Mabel Bent’s Chronicle of 1889)

The tomb of Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata (1839-1904), Brookwood Cemetery in Surrey (wikipedia).

We begin our essay on Theodore and Mabel Bent and India not at the Taj Mahal, nor the Ellora Caves, but in leafy Brookwood Cemetery (Surrey, UK), an hour from London, on May 24, 1904:

“And why, it may be asked, were so many Indian and English friends gathered… in such a place on a dismal day in a downpour of rain? The day was dismal, and rightly so, for the obsequies were being performed of Mr. Jamsetdjee Nusserwanjee Tata, the foremost citizen, taken all round, that India has produced during the long period of British rule over the most cultured and civilised people east of Suez…”

Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata (1839-1904) (wikipedia).

For it seems, indeed, that Mabel Bent, and perhaps Theodore too, although dead and buried himself these seven years, was a friend, or at least an acquaintance, of the extraordinary Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata (1839-1904), the pioneer Indian industrialist who founded the Tata Group, India’s largest conglomerate company (as at 2021).

And in the same periodical that reports the industrialist’s funeral – the Voice of India, Saturday, 18 June 1904 (p. 583) – we have an image of Mabel, bearing flowers, her long red hair tucked under a black hat:

“From Mr. N.J. Moola I have received the following list of inscriptions attached to the wonderfully beautiful and choice flowers that were an eloquent expression of the affection in which Mr. Tata was held…”

And included in this list we find: ‘With deep sympathy, from Mrs. Theodore Bent,’ and Mabel remained friends with the family, as a cutting from the Belfast Evening Telegraph of Monday, June 28, 1913, indicates: “Mrs. Theodore Bent’s recent evening party was as great a success as her other functions have always been, and was particularly noticeable for the number of distinguished foreign and Colonial guests present. The suite of beautiful rooms, which form a perfect museum of curios from all parts of the world, were looking their best, and were crowded with guests of many nationalities, many of the ladies wearing diamonds in the form of tiaras and other ornaments, some of the handsomest being displayed by a Parsee lady, Mrs. Ratan Tata, who had splendid sapphires set into diamond frames as a necklace, and also for securing her white saree.”

To be able to associate Mabel, the archetypal Victorian, with the legendary ‘Father of Indian Industry’ seems somehow an unusual but fanfaring introduction to the Bents and India, with all the dynamics and symbolism in play between the nations at the end of the 19th century. India meant something, and meant adventures in and around the region for the Bents.

A little scene-setting: one of Edward Lear’s “Indian Trees, Palms and Bamboos” from his 1873/5 journey. Ten years later Lear was to receive a copy of Theodore Bent’s book on the Cyclades (from ‘A Blog of Bosh’).

In all, our couple made three trips to India – not the London, ten-hour flight to Mumbai of today, but then, of course, traversing several seas (the Suez Canal was opened to navigation on 17 November, 1869). Let it be known, Theodore never expressed any sustained interest in exploring or excavating regionally in India, nor to travel and write about its culture; it seems the idea of the land was just too big for him to provide any focus or purchase, and there was something, too, in his psychology, that did not fit. And yet, such was the meaning of India, it would have been extraordinary indeed were he never to have set foot on the Asian continent. Thus, concisely, we can condense their trips to India into: one business meeting (1895), two transit stops (1889 and 1894), and one brief tourist excursion (1895).

But it was India nevertheless.

Theodore wrote no articles directly relating to these visits, the name ‘India’ appearing in just one title. For Mabel, her diary entries are strangely muted (as we shall read in a moment): there is no colour, no sensory Indian overload, as if British control of the ports they landed at and left from, without much exploration, had thrown an odd English and subfusc wash over everything.

P.&O.’s ad from ‘A handbook for travellers in India, Burma, and Ceylon’ (J. Murray 1911, archive.org).

Their first Asian visit was in December 1889 – in a dramatic volte face and characteristic burst of energy and enthusiasm from Theodore that was to launch the couple out of their Eastern-Mediterranean orbit – having been denied further rights to ‘explore’ in either Greece or Turkey – and project them thousands of kilometres eastwards, for Bahrain, then under British and India Office protection, and with Theodore at relative liberty therefore to shovel-and-pick his way there through the ‘Mounds of Ali’. His fuel for this foray was an interest he had by the end of the 1890s in various long-standing theories and Classical references that seemed to link Bahrain with the Phoenicians, and in turn to the movement of early peoples around the Eastern Mediterranean and beyond – perhaps the theme that could be said to be the pivot of his short life’s work; his means of taking himself and his wife to Bahrain was via a slow boat from Karachi, then in India and under the British Raj. But their first port of call was to be Bombay.

Map from “A handbook for travellers in India, Burma, and Ceylon” (J. Murray 1911, archive.org).

The summer of 1888 was taken up, as usual, with Theodore conducting a busy schedule of talks and lectures in England and Scotland, as well as a non-stop programme of article-writing and publishing. Late summer was the time for extended holidays in Ireland and northern England, seeing family and friends, and so it was not until after Christmas 1888 that Theodore and Mabel had everything in place to leave London. Through Suez, and changing at Aden, they reached Mumbai (then Bombay) after three weeks, and immediately left for Karachi and a cruise up the eastern side of the Persian Gulf; making a brief halt at Muscat, before crossing to Bushire, arriving there on 1 February 1889. From there they crossed the Gulf once more to reach Bahrain. (Their finds there, now in the British Museum, were modest and the couple spent only two weeks on the island.) By the end of February 1889 the couple are leaving again for Bushire, Mabel adding in her diary: ‘having passed 40 days and 40 nights of our precious time on the sea, we then and there made up our minds to return over land…’ And with this throwaway remark, Mabel announces the couple’s epic ride of some 2000 km through Persia, the first leg of their journey home to Marble Arch.

But let us now peer over Mabel’s shoulder and read her ‘Chronicle’ while she writes on the “British India S.S. Pemba, January 21st 1889, Monday. Passing Gujarat, India”

P&O’s SS ‘Rosetta’ in 1884 (photo taken by Walter Cunningham Hume). The Bents travelled on her from England to Aden in early 1889, where they changed to the P.&O. ‘Assam’ and then the B.I. ‘Pemba’ (courtesy of Nicholas Messinger).

“I now for the first time [Monday, 21st January 1889] feel tempted to bring forth this book, as I am so soon to get off the beaten track. Theodore and I left London on December 28th (Friday) in the P.&O.S.S. Rosetta, not a very comfortable or clean ship and landed at Naples (Saturday) on the way and changed at Aden (Monday), with no time to land, to the P.&O. Assam, which, though smaller, is wider and has much better passenger accommodation and was very clean.

A plan of Bombay from “A handbook for travellers in India, Burma, and Ceylon” ( J. Murray 1911, archive.org).

“We reached Bombay on Sunday 20th [January 1889] after a roughish time in the Indian Ocean, passing on Saturday the American racing yacht Coronet going round the world. There were few passengers on the ‘Assam’. And now I think we are among the most remarkable people in this world. Fancy going all the way to Bombay and departing thence without ever landing! We found the tender of the British India waiting hungrily for us and were carried off with the mails at once. This [i.e. the ‘Pemba’] is a very small ship and only one passenger for Kurrachi 1st class, but quantities of odd deck passengers dressed and the reverse. We have a cabin next to the little ladies’ cabin and their bath and all in communication, so Theodore has a dressing room and we are most comfortable. We are to call at several places on our way to Bushire. The sea is very calm and it is nice and cool and we are passing a coast like Holland with palms, or rather coconut trees.

Karachi and its environs. From “A handbook for travellers in India, Burma, and Ceylon” (J. Murray 1911, archive.org).

“We reached Kurrachi on Wednesday 23rd [January 1889] about 2 o’clock, and being tempted by the thought of 2 nights ashore, landed. We were surprised at the immense fleet of huge sailing boats which surrounded the ship instead of the usual little ones, but we were a good way out. They are building a new lighthouse further back and on lower ground but higher in itself, as the present one is being shaken by the guns on Manora Point.

Manora Point from “Kurrachee Past, Present And Future” by Alexander F Baillie, p. 62, 1890, Calcutta (archive.org).

“On landing on the bunder, or quay, we took a carriage for Reynold’s Hotel. After leaving the bunder, where various shipping buildings are, we drove for a mile or more along the bund, or embankment, across water and in about 6 miles we reached our destination. All around is arid and sandy but they are making a fierce fight to rear up some dusty plantains, palms, pepper trees, etc. The hotel was a great disappointment as the establishment is just a one-storeyed bungalow with a veranda all round and everyone’s door opening on to it and most with no kind of blind to prevent the inmates being beheld by outsiders. We found ourselves, when night came, in this case and so without ceremony flitted to a suite next door with imitation coloured glass. There was a dressing room behind and a built bath cemented in a bathroom beyond. All was very untidy and wretched and when night came we wished ourselves on board the ‘Pemba’.

Empress Market from “Kurrachee Past, Present And Future” by Alexander F Baillie, frontispiece, 1890, Calcutta (archive.org).

“The cantonment road was near, also many others intersecting the sandy plain all 40 feet wide and one with footpaths fully 20. This led past the bungalows of officers, each in a compound, which made the road very long and dull, and it was very hot too. On Thursday [24th January 1889] we drove to the city about 4 miles off and nearer the sea and discovered the native town and wandered up and down narrow streets full of people intermixed with cows and passed several baths where people were washing themselves outside the buildings.

“We departed at dawn on Friday [25th January 1889] and drove down to the bunder and were off after breakfast, now the only 1st class. Friday night we stopped 3 miles out from Gwadar in Beloochistan, so of course saw nothing, and on Sunday morning, 27th [January 1889] early, found ourselves at Muscat in Arabia.”

Five years on – Karachi revisited: Bound for India a second time

The MM SS ‘Ava’ at Port Said on her way to Aden. The Bents changed to the MM SS ‘La Seyne’ there for Karachi in the winter of 1894 (courtesy: P. Romona).

For 1895, the Bents have decided to make a second attempt to penetrate regions of Yemeni Hadramaut, this time approaching from the south-east, via Muscat again and the coast of modern Oman. Their first trek into the Wadi Hadramaut, in 1894, was only partially successful, and on their return they soon made plans to try again. Mabel’s previous Chronicle had ended in an upbeat tone with ‘and if we possibly can we’ll go back’. In any event they only had a few months (and, as said before, they normally took a break in mid-summer to visit family and friends in England and Ireland) to seek backing and make all the necessary preparations, including informing the ‘media’. Ultimately Theodore was ready to issue a ‘press release’ to The Times (31 October 1894): “Mr. Theodore Bent informs Reuter’s Agency that he and Mrs. Bent are about to start another scientific expedition to Southern Arabia. Leaving Marseilles by Messageries steamer on November 12, they will proceed to Kurrachee, whence they will tranship to Muscat.”

For a first-hand account, we have an extract from Mabel’s classic book on their Arabian adventures – Southern Arabia (1900) – in which she explains (p. 228 ff):

“My husband again, to our great satisfaction, had Imam Sharif, Khan Bahadur [expedition cartographer of note on their last trip], placed at his disposal; and, as the longest way round was the quickest and best, we determined to make our final preparations in India, and meet him and his men at Karachi.”

The MM SS “La Seyne”. The Bents sailed on her to Karachi in the winter of 1894/5 (courtesy: P. Romona).

But let’s at this point switch back to Mabel’s diaries, and her entry for: “Saturday 15th December, 1894. The Residency, Muscat. As it is now nearly a fortnight since I have seen a white woman, I think it time to start my writing. We left England [Friday] Nov. 9th [1894] and after 2 nights at Boulogne embarked at Marseilles on [Monday] the 12th [November 1894] on board the M.M.S.S. ‘Ava’. We had a good passage and warm, seeing Etna smoking on the way, and about 2 days after had a great white squall; I daresay in connection with the earthquakes. We transshipped at Aden to ‘La Seyne’, Theodore going ashore to see about the camp furniture left there 7 months ago.

Government House, where the Bents stayed in Karachi in November 1894. From “Kurrachee Past, Present And Future” by Alexander F Baillie, p. 146, 1890, Calcutta (archive.org).

“We reached Kurrachee on the morning of [Thursday] the 29th [November 1894] and a letter came on board from Mr. James, the Commissioner, asking us to stay at Government House, saying he was going to the Durbar at Lahore, but his sister, Mrs. Pottinger, would entertain us – and so she did, most kindly. She is so pretty and charming, I do not know which of us was most in love with her…

The Sind Club and Frere Hall, Karachi. From “Kurrachee Past, Present And Future” by Alexander F. Baillie, p. 148, 1890, Calcutta (archive.org).

“We remained at Kurrachee till Monday night after dinner. We drove out every evening and one morning went to the bazaars. I bought a lot of toe rings of various shapes, silver with blue and green enamel. They were weighed against rupees and 2 annas added to each rupee. One day we went to call on 2 brides and bridegrooms, Mr. and Mrs. McIver Campbell and Mr. and Mrs. Thornton. The ladies, Miss Grimes and Miss Moody, had come out to our steamer, been married that day, and were passing their honeymoon together at Reynold’s Hotel, amid the pity of all beholders. We embarked [Monday 3rd/Tuesday 4th December 1894] on the B.I.S.N.S.S. Chanda with a little plum pudding Mrs. Pottinger had had made and mixed and stirred by herself and us, and Mr. Ireland, a young invalid officer who was being taken care of at Government House, and her young nephew, Mr. A. James. We were 3 days on the Chanda, a clean little ship with a very clever nice Captain Whitehead, and on Thursday morning [6th December 1894] we reached Muscat…”

A third and final return to India

Theodore’s own watercolour sketch of Muscat from his paper ‘Exploration of the Frankincense Country, Southern Arabia’. The Geographical Journal, 1895, Vol. 6 (2) (Aug), 109-33.

Alas, this expedition along the Oman coast also turns out to be less than successful – although the couple made some remarkable discoveries. The fastness that was the ‘Wadi Hadhramout’ again resisted the Bents’ advances and the party found itself stranded at Sheher, on Yemen’s south coast, in late January 1895, in vain hoping to strike northwards into the Wadi area, or, failing that, to return to Muscat to explore further there.

Mabel’s expedition Chronicle of around this date is haphazard and, understandably, rather depressed. Something happens, and, as in nowhere else in her twenty years of diary-keeping, the detailed notes of the couple’s travels disappear. We get a few lines from the Yemeni south coast before moving with her on board the Imperator for Mumbai:

“[About Wednesday, 30th January 1895, Sheher] … The next 2 days there were great negotiations and plannings as to our future course. One plan was to go hence to Inat in the Wadi Hadhramout, down to Kabre Hud and Bir Borhut and thence to the Mosila Wadi; eastward and back by the coast to this place and then try to go westward. But the other is to us preferable; to go along the coast, first up Mosila and into the Hadhramout and then try to go west, without coming here again. Of course there are so many delays of all sorts that we shall be here some days yet. The one pleasure we can enjoy is a quiet walk along the shore covered with pretty shells and birds…

A Bombay street, from ‘A handbook for travellers in India, Burma, and Ceylon’ (J. Murray 1911, p.203 archive.org).

“A good long time has elapsed since I wrote and I resume my Chronicle. Sunday, February 17th [1895]. And hardly can I write for the shaking of the very empty Austrian Lloyd S.S. ‘Imperator’ bound for Bombay. After a good deal of illusory delay, the Sultan Hussein declared he could not answer in any way for our safety if we went anywhere and so we at first thought of going to Muscat in a dhow and going to the Jebel Akhdar, as we had intended if it had not been for Imam Sheriff’s illness, but with the wind blowing N.E. it would have taken fully a month. We then must have gone round by India to get home and all our steamer clothes were at Aden. So as soon as we could we hired a dhow and embarked thereupon at about 1 o’clock for Aden…”

Back on dry land, we know the Bents were in Aden again by Wednesday, 13 February 1895. On that date Theodore wrote a ‘press release’ via the Royal Geographical Society, which was published in The Times of 1 March, announcing that ‘The party… went on to Sheher… Last year the people were very friendly to Mr. Bent’s party and promised to take them on a tour into the interior, but the season was too far advanced. To Mr. Bent’s surprise, however they received him and his party very coldly, absolutely refused to let them go outside the town, and told them that for the future no European would be allowed to enter the Hadramaut… Although it is evident Mr. Bent has not been able to carry out what would have been an expedition of the first magnitude, still it would seem that his journey will not be without interesting and novel results. His latest letter is dated from Aden, February 13, and he expects to be home about the middle of April.’

The Austrian Lloyd ‘Imperator’. The Bents travelled on her from Aden to Mumbai in early 1895 (B. Ivancovich, wikipedia).

And they will come home via India; and Mabel’s few lines above are all we have of the Bents’ last trip there. Why did Mabel not keep up her diary? They would have reached Bombay on the Imperator (a lovely ship of 4140 tons, launched in September 1886 to mark the 50th anniversary of the Austrian Lloyd Shipping Company) by the end of February 1895, and we know the two of them were back in London by the end of April.

The Manchester Guardian of 25 April 1895 carried another report: ‘Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Bent have returned to London after spending the winter in exploring some of the little known or entirely unknown valleys of Southeastern Arabia. The flying trip which Mr. Bent made to India to see Colonel Holdich, the head of the Indian Survey, as to some unexpected difficulties, presumably of official origin, thrown in the way of the realisation of his plans for visiting the Eastern Hadramaut Valley, was unfortunately unsuccessful, as Colonel Holdich was absent on frontier business…’

Superintendent of Frontier Surveys in British India, Theodore’s friend, Colonel Sir Thomas H. Holdich (wikipedia).

Allowing for a two- or three-week journey back to England, Theodore and Mabel would have remained three or four weeks in India. As we have read above, one mission Theodore had in the country was to try and find his friend the great ‘Superintendent of Frontier Surveys in British India’, Colonel Sir Thomas H. Holdich, intending to elicit his support for one further expedition to the Hadramaut.

But Mabel’s above note, about needing Aden again to collect their personal effects, including ‘steamer clothes’ prior to making for Bombay, leads indirectly to one last bit of classic tourism and sightseeing – the fabled Ellora Caves. It looks, however, as if Mabel never went along; indeed, the only reference we have to the trip comes after Mabel’s death in 1929; prompted by her obituary in the Times, a letter appears in the same newspaper a few days later. This letter, of 6 July 1929, is from Mrs Julia Marie Tate, of 76 Queensborough Terrace, Hyde Park, London, widow of William Jacob Tate, in which she wistfully recalls:

“… a vivid picture of a moonlit night as clear as day off Aden, watching Arabian ‘sampans’ unloading tents and quantities of camp ‘saman’ [personal effects]. Presently their owners climbed up, Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Bent. A few months before [i.e. the winter of 1894/5] we had called at their [London] house in Great Cumberland-place to learn their whereabouts, but the *butler knew nothing, only that they were ‘somewhere in the Indian Ocean.’ This improvised meeting brought about the fulfilment of a cherished desire of theirs when my husband took his old schoolfellow to see the wonder caves of Ellora. This was their last reunion on earth.”

Part of the ‘Carpenter’s Cave’, Buddhist Cave 10 at Ellora, and visited by Theodore Bent in 1895 (wikipedia).

It is remarkably odd that Mabel makes no mention of this trip to the ‘wonder caves’ – was she ill? Or prevented somehow from going? Did it cause such resentment that she refused to chronicle the stay in Mumbai, and the long journey home by sea? Her regret at missing out on this excursion – then as now one of India’s greatest tourist attractions – can be imagined, for she was not easily denied. Also unusual is the fact that Theodore also wrote nothing about the visit to the caves (a trip that would have necessitated several nights away from his wife) – he did have much else on his mind, but perhaps also he had no desire to bring up the matter again and avoid any breakfast-table ill will!

The Ellora Caves for tourists. ‘Thomas Cook: India Burma and Ceylon : information for travellers and residents’ (1898, p. 79) (archive.org)

And his companion? William Jacob Tate (1853-1899) was at Repton School with Theodore in the late 1860s. He joined the Indian Civil Service but had to retire early on account of his health and died just two years after Theodore in December 1899, at the age of 46. Mabel and Mrs Tate perhaps remained in town while Theodore and his old school friend visited the Ellora cave complex of monasteries and temples carved in the basalt cliffs north of Aurangabad (Maharashtra State), some 300 km north-east of Mumbai – “Reached from Nandgaon (G.I.P. Railway) by tonga, holding three passengers… Visitors are advised to take a sufficient supply of provisions and liquors for the trip.’ (Thomas Cook: India Burma and Ceylon : information for travellers and residents (1898, p. 79)

As for Mrs Tate, she can be forgiven her unseen tears in her letter to the Times. A stone in the Kemmel Chateau Military Cemetery Heuvelland, Belgium, is inscribed: ‘Tate, Lieutenant, William Louis, 3rd Bn., Royal Fusiliers. Killed in action 13 March 1915. Age 24. Eldest son of the late William Jacob Tate, I.C.S., and of Mrs. Julia Marie Tate.’ And the Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial has this: ‘Tate, Captain, Frederick Herman, Mentioned in Despatches, 10th Bn., King’s Royal Rifle Corps. 11 August 1917. Age 22. Son of Mrs. Tate… the late W.J. Tate.’

The old steamer on her westward bearing leaves Bombay in her wake. No amount of meditation in the Ellora Caves, or anywhere else, will ease such wounds, be it for Tate or Tata: ‘With deep sympathy, from Mrs. Theodore Bent.’

References to Mabel Bent’s diary from: The Travel Chronicles of Mrs. J. Theodore Bent, Vol. 3, Arabia (2010) and the Bents’ travel classic Southern Arabia (1900)

* The ‘butler’ here is Mr. A. Lovett, and it is a pleasure to reference him; how nice it would be to trace his descendants (if any). Sadly, he was to lose his job on Bent’s demise in May 1897. The Morning Post of 13 May prints this notice: “Mrs. Theodore Bent can recommend A. Lovett as Butler: four years’ character; leaving through death. – A.L., 13 Great Cumberland-place, W.”

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Birthday greetings from ‘Kalenzia, on the Isle of Sokotra, 1897’. A ‘lost’ watercolour by Theodore Bent

*‘Kalenzia, Isle of Socotra, 1897’. Watercolour (detail; private collection, reproduced with permission).*

“Mr. Theodore Bent, the famous archaeologist is going to explore the island of Sokotra, on the West Coast [sic] of Africa, this winter. Sokotra is said to contain some important ruins, and if Mr. Bent can discover anything as interesting as the buried cities of Mashonaland he will have again achieved fame.” (‘The Morning Leader’ – Tuesday 08 December 1896)

Poor Theodore Bent spent his 45th, and last, birthday (30 March 1897) in hospital in Aden, malaria stricken. Just a few weeks beforehand, however, he and his wife Mabel were happily wandering on camels through the plains and mountains of Socotra – a speck a centimetre west of the Horn of Africa on most maps – looking for archaeological remains and enjoying the fantastical scenery; Mabel took photographs while Theodore sketched in watercolour in his naïve way. How far back did he work at this style? As a Yorkshire Baildon boy? Or at Repton and Wadham? In any event he obviously took pleasure in the art and his illustrations later assisted his studies in the field (reminiscences, maps, plans, inscriptions, etc.); he felt assured enough to have his views published in all his books and, editors permitting, in many of his articles that had to do with the couple’s adventures in the Eastern Mediterranean, Ethiopia, Great Zimbabwe, Southern Arabia, Persia…

Heading from Mabel Bent’s Socotran diary 1896/7.

Mabel’s diaries often refer to her husband’s drawing materials and sketches, calling the latter ‘pretty’. Theodore was sketching on his last trip, in 1897, to Socotra and Aden, as his wife records: “[Thursday] February 4th [1897]. The mountains of the Haghier range [Socotra] are most beautifully peaked and needled, and here look red, not being smothered by the smooth, grey lichen. We were, though sorry to quit the mountains, glad to reach the plain, cross a river on stones and mount our camels and reach Suk… We encamped by a lagoon and had a pleasant afternoon and evening walking by the sea, and also choosing places for photography on the morrow and Theodore sketching. We had to keep the tent open at night it was so warm and still.’ [‘Travel Chronicles of Mabel Bent’, Vol. 3, Southern Arabia, 2010, page 303]

Socotra Cucumber Tree (Dendrosicyos socotrana), watercolour by Theodore Bent (1897). [See Derdriu Marriner’s article (March 2024) on this rare tree, which the author has kindly dedicated to the Bents: “with appreciation for their pioneer research via a 15-year expedition to eastern Mediterranean, Africa and Arabia and for the artistry of Theodore’s sketches and Mabel’s photographs.”]

Several of Bent’s watercolours of Socotra are illustrated in the couple’s great work ‘Southern Arabia’. His sketch book (17.5 x 25 cm) obviously survived the rigours and maladies of the hard journey and return home from Aden at the end of April 1887. Although Theodore and Mabel were still terribly ill, once out of hospital, and barely fit for travel, they embarked immediately for Marseilles. There Theodore had a relapse and although rushed back to their London home, he died a few days later in early May (1897). His sketch book remained unopened until Mabel felt strong enough psychologically to have the watercolours photographed and prepared as plates for ‘Southern Arabia’, the anthology of their years spent in the region.

‘Kalenzia, Isle of Socotra, 1897’. Watercolour (detail), by Theodore Bent (private collection, reproduced with permission; see colour version at top of this post).

As for the original watercolours now, who knows? But by a miracle, one has survived in a private collection – it probably never travelled back to Marble Arch with the invalid couple in the spring of 1897: it is a scene of ‘Kalenzia’ (Qalansiyah), a coastal village at the extreme east of Socotra (a Google image of the area is also shown here below); we are looking west, it is sunset, the mountains above the village sombre; in the foreground, among palm trees, are a few simple huts and what looks like a mosque with its minaret. Theodore has signed his name bottom right, with the inscription ‘Kalenzia, I[sle] of Socotra, 1897’.

The DNB of 1901 adds to Bent’s entry that “[his] notebooks and numerous drawings and sketches remain in the possession of Mrs. Bent.” A few of his notebooks are in the Joint Library of the Hellenic and Roman Societies, London, but where are his “numerous drawings and sketches”? Do please let us know if you have any information on Theodore’s unpublished ones!

Let’s be clear, although Theodore made hundreds of them, surviving original watercolours by him are as rare as evidence of the elusive Queen of Sheba he spent his last years looking for. A portfolio of watercolours of Great Zimbabwe and its surroundings is thought to be in Harare… and that’s it, apart from the aforementioned scene of ‘Kalenzia’, a detail of which is appropriately used for Theodore’s last birthday card (heading this post). This mesmeric scene is not reproduced in the Bents’ ‘Southern Arabia’, but it would surely have if Mabel had been in possession of it as she worked assembling her book in London in 1900. As mentioned previously, the chances are the picture never reached Marble Arch with the rest of their travel gear in the early summer of 1897. Did Theodore give or sell it in Aden, or on the long journey home by steamer, through Suez, to Marseilles. Did someone say, ‘That’s nice’, and Theodore present it with a bow – perhaps to Henry Watts Russell de Coëtlogon (1839–1908), with whom the Bents dined in Aden on their last, sad, journey? It surely could not just have been lost (or stolen) before the Bents reached England? The happy coda is that, whatever happened to it since it materialised in Qalansiyah some 120 years ago, it appeared at auction in Germany in 2013, and is now being privately and luckily enjoyed. Happy birthday Theodore.

*Modern-day Qalansiyah, Socotra (Google).*

This article is dedicated to the UNESCO-Friends of Socotra campaign entitled Connect 2 Socotra (#connect2socotra), promoting scientific research and awareness of the unique natural and cultural heritage of the Socotra UNESCO Natural World Heritage Site and the importance of protecting Socotra Archipelago’s unique species and ecosystems for the future.

Socotra is of universal importance with a biodiversity of rich and distinct flora and fauna, much of which does not occur anywhere else in the world. It also has globally significant populations of land and sea birds, including a number of threatened species and an extremely diverse marine life

In order to raise awareness of the rich and distinct heritage of Socotra, UNESCO is collaborating with the Friends of Socotra in organising a campaign of awareness events and publicity around the world. Using the hashtag #connect2socotra, the purpose of the Connect 2 Socotra Campaign is to connect the world to Socotra, and connect Socotra to the world. Search Google for campaign news and events.

December 2022 – a new discovery: A further unpublished watercolour sketch by Bent made on Sokotra in early 1897, showing two camels and distant mountains, appears in Alice Norton: ‘Mabel Virginia Anna Bent – Explorer’, appearing in Carloviana 2023, the Journal of the Carlow Historical and Archaeological Society (Dec. 2022, pp.117-123).

A review of Bent birthdays based on Mabel Bent’s Chronicles, 1884-1897

The accompanying interactive map below plots these birthdays: Mabel in green, Theodore in blue. (NB: London [13 Great Cumberland Place] stands in for unknown locations in Great Britain; the couple could have been away visiting family and friends in Ireland or England, including at their property ‘Sutton Hall’, outside of Macclesfield.)

There were 28 Bent birthday events (2 x 14) between 1884–1897 (the years covered by Mabel Bent’s diaries). Of these 28, only 5 (18%) were not spent in the field, and only 7 times (25%) does Mabel refer to a birthday in her notebooks directly. In the above Table, column 1 gives the year and ages of the Bents on their birthdays; columns 2 and 3 give their birthday locations. Events in red are when Mabel refers directly to their birthdays. ‘London’ is standing in for unknown locations in Great Britain. If not at their main residence (13 Great Cumberland Place), the couple could have been visiting family and friends in Ireland and England, including at their property Sutton Hall, outside of Macclesfield.

An announcement in the Colorado Catholic, Saturday, 6 February 1897, well illustrating the celebrity status of the Bents by this time at home and abroad: “Explorations in the East. Mr. Theodore Bent will this winter undertake another of his archaeological explorations in the East. Last year he made the eastern Sudan the scene of his investigations, and he has just left England for Aden, whence he will proceed either inland through Arabia, working our unexplored ground, or visit the island of Sokotra, off the coast of Africa. This island is believed to contain the ruins of great antiquarian interest, and has never been explored by an archaeologist.”

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The skeletal material excavated on Antiparos in 1883/4 by Theodore Bent

Some recognition, after 137 years, for the skeletal material excavated in 1883/4 on the Cycladic island of Antiparos by Theodore Bent.

“The skull from the Greek tombs at Antiparos placed in my hands for examination by Mr. Bent is that of an adult male of middle age.” [J.G. Garson, M.D., Royal College of Surgeons, in J.T. Bent ‘Notes on Prehistoric Remains in Antiparos’. The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. XIV (2) (Nov 1884), 134-41] (NHMUK PA HR 12070, RCS 5.3162, FC 531B. Photo courtesy of the Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London, 2022)

Theodore Bent’s first rung on the archaeologist’s ladder, as it were, is represented by his few weeks in late 1883 and early 1884 excavating some prehistoric graves on Antiparos in the Greek Cyclades (see map below). Bent writes “I was induced to dig at Antiparos, because I was shown extensive graveyards there. Of these, I visited no less than four on the island itself, and heard from natives of the existence of others in parts of the island I did not visit…” (Researches Among the Cyclades, 1884, p.47)

As to how this all came about is revealed in his wife’s ‘Chronicle’:

“… we only found, besides bones, 2 very rough marble symbols of men and women, little flat things and some broken pottery.” Mabel Bent’s diary (18/12/1883 ?) recording their first ‘excavation’ at Krassades, Antiparos (Hellenic Society Archive, London)

“Tuesday [1883, December 18th?]. Rode 1½ hour to the nearest point to Antiparos carrying only our night things and a card of introduction from Mr. Binney for Mr. R. Swan who has a calamine mine on this island. Crossed in about 10 minutes [from Paros]. Found the population all enjoying the feast of St. Nikoloas who replaces Neptune. At one house I was obliged to join in the syrtos holding 2 handkerchiefs. We sent a messenger to Mr. Swan and knowing he would take 3 hours to return, rode to meet him. Met Mr. Swan who more than fulfilled our warmest hopes. He took us to his house, and after resting told us that in making a road he had come upon a lot of graves and found a marble cup, broken etc. So, we manifesting a great wish to dig too, he got men and we opened 4. They were lined and paved with slabs of stone and the people must have been doubled up in them, they were so small; we only found, besides bones, 2 very rough marble symbols of men and women, little flat things and some broken pottery.” [The Travel Chronicles of Mabel Bent, vol 1, Oxford 2006, pp 21-2]

The Swans' house — What is thought to be the house of Robert Swan at Krassades, Antiparos. The Bents may well have been based there for their excavations in late 1883, early 1884 (photo = Alan King)

The Scottish engineer Robert Swan (1858-1904), and his brother John, were at that time working for a French mining company and were settled on the western coast of Antiparos around the site known today as Krassades – his house, where the Bents spent the night, having excavated some of the famous Cycladic figurines (which he sold to the British Museum) and the skeletal material, can still be seen. The next day (19th December 1883?) the Bents went back to Paros for Christmas and the New Year, not returning to Antiparos to undertake more excavations until 4 February 1884 (for three weeks). Mabel does not provide much information on this second campaign:

Some of the “little marble figures” recovered by the Bents from the area of Krassades, where the skeletal material was uncovered (in Bent, J.T. 1884. Researches among the Cyclades. The Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. 5, 42-59).

“… As I have been very lazy about my Chronicle, I will only say that there I stayed 3 weeks [February 1884], during which time we did lots of fishing, sometimes with dynamite, which is against the law and very dangerous, but the fishermen here did it… A good deal of grave digging was also done and a good many pots of earth and marble found, also knives of volcanic glass, little marble figures and a little silver one also, very rough, and some personal ornaments of brass and silver…” [The Travel Chronicles of Mabel Bent, vol 1, Oxford 2006, pp 45-6]

Altogether, Theodore Bent records having opened around 40 graves at two of the sites they explored, referring to Krassades as the ‘poorer’ (i.e. earlier):

“And now a few words about the graves themselves. In the first place those on the western slope are very irregular in shape: some oblong, some triangular, some square ; they generally had three slabs to form the sides, the fourth being built up with stones and rubbish. There was always a slab on the top, and sometimes at the bottom of the grave. They were on an average 3 feet long, 2 feet wide, and seldom more than 2 feet deep. In every grave here we found bones, chiefly heaped together in confusion, and most of the graves contained the bones of more bodies than one. In one very small grave we found two skulls, so tightly wedged together between the side slabs that they could not be removed whole.” [Notes on Prehistoric Remains in Antiparos, pp. 137-8]

“May 7, 1884. Skull from an ancient [cemetery?] found in the Island of Antiparos one of the Cyclades. An account of the excavations in which it was found is published by the donor in the Athenaeum for May 3rd 1884. Thought to belong to a period previous to the 16th cent. BC. Presented by Theodore Bent Esq, 43 Great Cumberland Place, W.” (RCS : Register of Accessions or Donations, 1862-1886, Ref: RCS-MUS/3/1/6. © Royal College of Surgeons, reproduced with permission). In his famous book covering the two seasons (1883-4) he and his wife Mabel spent touring the region (The Cyclades, or Life Among the Insular Greeks, 1885), the young archaeologist makes a reference to having returned to London with the skeletal material uncovered on Antiparos and that a skull was donated to the Royal College of Surgeons, who briefly published it, according to the science of the time:

“The skull from the Greek tombs at Antiparos placed in my hands for examination by Mr. Bent is that of an adult male of middle age.” [‘Notes On An Ancient Grecian Skull Obtained By Mr. Theodore Bent From Antiparos, One Of The Cyclades’, by J.G. Garson, M.D., Royal College of Surgeons, in J.T. Bent ‘Notes on Prehistoric Remains in Antiparos’. The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. XIV (2) (Nov 1884), 134-41; Biographical note: ‘J.G. Garson, M.D., F.Z.S., Memb. Anthrop. Inst., Anat. Assist. Royal College of Surgeons, and Lecturer on Comparative Anatomy at Charing Cross Medical School’]

And that might have been that for this Early Cycladic individual, but the Bent Archive felt that he deserved more attention, and the Royal College of Surgeons was approached to see if they had any information on the subject. There was good and bad news – Yes, the skull appears in their registers [Register of Accessions or Donations, 1862-1886, Ref: RCS-MUS/3/1/6], but, No, it was probably destroyed in the Blitz, when about a third of their collection was lost. But, their archivist continued, try the Natural History Museum, where some items had been transferred before the war.

Our approach to the Museum revealed that, indeed, the skull was there in South Kensington, and not just a skull, but another skull fragment, a pelvis, and also a considerable assemblage of ribs and assorted long-bones. This was a new discovery. Bent makes no mention of returning with such a large collection – and nor have the bones been catalogued or studied; indeed, without such study there is no way of knowing how many individuals are involved, nor from which site they came. We know that Bent made at least two investigations of burials sites on Antiparos, and Mabel Bent in her diaries also refers to finding bones on Paros and perhaps elsewhere. Without further research it is not possible to say whether all the material is from the significant and early Krassades site.

In the early summer of 2022, the Natural History Museum took the first ever photographs of the skulls and fragments of a pelvis, and have very kindly given their permission for us to reproduce the cranium mentioned by the excavator in his laconic footnote on page 409 of his 1885 monograph – “The skull I presented to the Royal College of Surgeons.” It has not been seen by anyone outside a museum drawer for almost 140 years, and very far from the sunny Cyclades.

Finds from Krassades in the National Archaeological Museum, Athens — Other finds from Krassades in the National Archaeological Museum, Athens, possibly dating to the era of the skeletal material recovered by the Bents. (photo= Alan King)

Mabel Bent was to become the expedition photographer on the couple’s subsequent annual journeys to the Levant, Africa and Arabia, but not for the trip to the Cyclades, alas, or we might have been able to see the skull before in some way (it is also rather strange, perhaps, that it seems never to have been drawn for any of Bent’s articles).

In any event, the artefact is respectfully presented here, and it is gratifying to bring this individual from an early Mediterranean culture to a wider audience for the first time (August 2022). Hopefully a project to sort, classify, and catalogue all the Natural History Museum Bent Collection material can be undertaken to see whether further scientific analyses might be appropriate: the last decade or so has seen considerable interest in the prehistoric past of the region (e.g. the work of Colin Renfrew et al. not far away at Keros and Daskalio, off Naxos).

We are delighted to add (January 2024) that the skeletal material recovered by the Bents from Antiparos in the winter of 1883/4 and now in the Natural History Museum, London, has recently been assessed by Laura Ortiz Guerrero in “Osteological analysis of the Early Bronze Age human remains excavated from Antiparos in the 19th century” (Unpublished Master’s Dissertation, University of Sheffield, Department of Archaeology, 2023).

One of the pottery jars (this one with incised linear decoration) excavated by Theodore Bent on Antiparos in 1884 (1884,1213.42 3200 BC-2800BC, © The Trustees of the British Museum).

Present whereabouts unknown, but presumably in the former Musée Archéologique De Charleroi, a most interesting group of four vases (two stone, two clay) was removed from Antiparos after 1850 and entered the collection of the industrialist Valère Mabille (1840-1909), who later presented them to the ‘Société paléontologique et archéologique de l’arrondissement judiciaire de Charleroi’. One of the vessels is nearly identical to a jar removed by Bent from the sprawling site at Krassades and sold later to the British Museum (1884,1213.42). It is very possible that the four Charleroi pots are from the site Bent was to explore in 1883/4, and were looted during the French mining operations that were ongoing there before the Bents arrived. One of the pots, it seems, contained some skeletal material, possibly not yet analysed; the bones Bent brought back from the Krassades site are currently being studied. Such examples from Antiparos are very rare. The echo of Mabel in Mabille does not go unheard. (Ch. Delvoye, Quatre vases préhelléniques du musée archéologique de Charleroi, L’Antiquité Classique, 1947, 47-58)

For those interested in a select bibliography on the subject, we can list for you, inter alia:

Bent, J.T. 1884. Prehistoric Graves at Antiparos. Athenæum, Issue 2949 (May), 569-71.

Bent, J.T. 1884. Researches among the Cyclades. The Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. 5, 42-59. [With J.G. Garson].

Bent, J.T. 1884. Notes on Prehistoric Remains in Antiparos. The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. XIV (2) (Nov), 134-41.

Bent, J.T. 1885, The Cyclades, or Life Among the Insular Greeks: 403 ff. London: Longmans, Green and Co.

Bent, M.V.A. 2006. Mabel Bent’s Travel Chronicles Vol 1, Greece: 21-22, Oxford: Archaeopress.

Evans, J.D. and C. Renfrew, Excavations At Saliagos: Near Antiparos. The British School at Athens. Supplementary Volumes, No. 5, (1968), pp. iii-xi, 1-226.

King, A. 2021. Of Crows and Swans and Calamine – the Archaeology Theatre of Antiparos, April 2021.

Papadopoulou, Z. 2017. Πρόσφατες αρχαιολογικές έρευνες στην Αντίπαρο (Recent Archaeological Researches in Antiparos), https://www.academia.edu/38788690/