The Negeb or Desert south of Beersheba.

Description

T.E. Lawrence’s Secret Map of the Negev.

This is a 1921 map of the Negev region, based on surveys undertaken in 1913–1914, printed by the Geographical Section, General Staff of the British War Office for the Palestine Exploration Fund. Ostensibly commissioned for archaeological purposes, it was in fact an intelligence map made for the British military on the eve of the First World War.

The Map in Detail

The map covers from Gaza City in the north to El-Themed in the south. The international boundary between the Ottoman Empire and the Khedivate of Egypt, which ran across the Sinai Peninsula between Rafah and Aqaba, is prominently marked. Roads of different qualities, railways, telephone and telegraph lines, historical ruins, and other features are indicated throughout. Water sources, from wadis to wells (bir) are marked throughout with blue text, crucial information in such an arid climate. Some of these lie on the Darb el Haj (Way of the Pilgrims), marked at the bottom here, leading from Egypt to the Hejaz. Elevation is indicated with contour lines and recorded in feet, while notes on terrain are included. A box of text at the bottom-right discusses the region’s geography, archaeology, resources, and peoples, distinguishing between sedentary peoples (fellah) near the coast and Bedouin tribes inland.

Historical Context

The Palestine Exploration Fund was founded in 1865 by backers of the then-recently-completed Ordnance Survey of Jerusalem, the first Ordnance Survey conducted outside the borders of Great Britain. Though nominally an independent research society, the Fund maintained close relationships with British military topographers and other British government representatives, such as consuls, as well as clergy members, archaeologists, and Biblical scholars. Perhaps the Fund’s greatest achievement was the ‘Survey of Western Palestine’ (1871–1877) led by Claude Conder and British military legend H.H. Kitchener. By the early 20th century, the focus had shifted increasingly to archaeological expeditions, which, like most in the region at the time, also became entangled with wider geopolitical struggles.

Just before the outbreak of World War I, the Fund sponsored a survey of the Negev (or Negeb) led by Captain Stewart Francis Newcombe. One part of the wider survey was the ‘Wilderness of Zin’ survey (1913–1914), led by C. Leonard Woolley and T.E. Lawrence. Ostensibly an archaeological mission to track the Israelites’ biblical route, it was in fact a military survey of the Ottoman-held Negev. The resulting ‘Newcombe Map’ was the first modern, scientific mapping of this region, becoming an important resource for the British throughout the war and into the Mandate period. This expedition marked the end of the PEF’s ‘heroic age’ and set the stage for the more administrative and academic approach that would characterize the Fund’s work during the British Mandate.

Publication History and Census

This map is based on surveys conducted by Woolley, Lawrence, and other team members of Newcombe’s in 1913–1914. It was then printed in 1921 by the War Office for the Palestine Exploration Fund. The map is cataloged (either by the title on the map itself or by the cover title ‘Map of the Negeb’) among the holdings of nine institutions in the OCLC, none of which are in the United States.