Alexandria: The Quest for the Lost City.
Edmund Richardson.
Bloomsbury. 2021. 331 pp.
ISBN 978 1 5266 0381 4.
This story is about following your dreams to the ends of the earth—and what happens when you get there.
Had he know what was coming, Lewis might have stayed in bed.
Richardson admits from the start that people have been searching for the truth about Charles Masson for almost 200 years, that Masson's autobiography is full of lies, and that "every writer who has taken on Masson has ended up with some embarrassing bruises." Yet, although he relies heavily on Masson's heavily titled Narrative of Various Journeys in Balochistan, Afghanistan and the Panjab Including a Residence in Those Countries from 1826 to 1838, and the equally unreliable journals and letters of other 19th century travelers in those lands, he also uses official documents and letters to tell Masson's story.
James Lewis was born in 1800 and grew up in London. At the age of 21, he joined the East India Company, which at that time was a dominant power in India, controlling trade (especially in opium), and maintaining its own private army and a vast network of spies. Lewis served in its Bengal artillery for six years, participated in the siege of Bharatpur, and then, as Richardson puts it, declared "independence day" and deserted from the army camp in Agra. It was mid-summer, he had little money, he discarded his army uniform, changed his name to "Charles Masson," and had to live on his wits. In his autobiography, he wrote...
I was now destitute, a stranger in the centre of Asia, unacquainted with the language—which would have been most useful to me—and from my colour exposed on all occasions to notice.
From this inauspicious beginning, Masson went on to become "one of the greatest archaeologists of the age." His work was read, first, at the Asiatic Society of Bengal to "applause so loud it might have been heard in Kabul." It reached the attention of learned societies in England, and some of his finds are now displayed in the British Museum. His journey to this status, however, is the stuff of adventure stories, and Richardson makes the most of it. He endured robbery, beatings, incarceration, and near starvation; he accompanied bands of robbers, became a holy man who would be fed by local people, a Muslim pilgrim on the Haj, a quack doctor dispensing magical potions and charms, and, at one time, an American traveler from Kentucky. He was kidnapped, offered a kingdom (which he declined), and became an expert in self-invention. Inevitably, he eventually came to the notice of an East India Company spy, but because of the intimate knowledge had had acquired of the country and his ability to mix with of the local people and with the local rulers, instead of executing him, the Company blackmailed him into becoming one of their spies as well.
Masson had to endure many things before this, and his interest in archaeology began by accident. After leaving Agra he headed for the Indian border. Reliant on begging for food and water, he barely survived the searing heat of the Thar Desert to cross the border and arrive in rags at Ahmedpur, in present day Pakistan. There he was taken to the court of the Khan, where he met an American adventurer called Josiah Harland.
"Harland went through life with his hand on his pistol and his head in the clouds," writes Richardson, and Harland's Personal Narrative is one of his sources of information about Masson. When Masson met him, Harland was about to "help" the exiled king of Afghanistan to regain his throne. He had his own "ragged bunch of mercenaries," and he saw in Masson a trained soldier who could be useful to him, so he enlisted him and paid him as his "confidential retainer." Harlan was obsessed with the life of Alexander the Great, and the area in which they travelled as they headed for Afghanistan was well-known as "the subject of Alexander's exploits." He constantly regaled Masson with stories of Alexander.
Some of Masson's most traumatic and shaping experiences happened after he "deserted" Harlan's ragged "army," but "on 9 June 1832, Masson walked through the gates of Kabul, after a journey that had taken almost five years."
The Pashtans say that when God created the world, he had a heap of rocks left over, out of which he made Afghanistan. Crossing the borderlands, even in good company, was an arduous journey. But to Masson, everything seemed strange and beautiful. Dusty brown plains and wide fertile valleys gave way to red-gold mountain foothills and snow-covered peaks. Dazed from lack of sleep, "I could almost imagine," he wrote, "that I was travelling in fairyland." He had fallen in love with this land.
Hardly anyone noticed him in Kabul. He lived a quiet life, reading all he could about Alexander (Richardson does not say where he found the books), and he began exploring the surrounding borderlands where Alexander had reputedly built a great city. He found coins with strange inscriptions, which he managed to decipher as ancient Greek, and then, in a mound near the tiny village of Bimaran, his workmen uncovered a slate-lined apartment which held inscribed coins and a grey, soapstone container.
Masson had eyes only for the container. Slowly, carefully, he lifted the lid. Inside, the light shimmered and glinted on metal and jewels. The container was full of "burnt pearls, beads of sapphire," and precious gems. "In the centre was standing a casket of gold."
This gold casket, which is now in the British Museum, had figures shaped into its sides, one of which is the first known depiction of Buddha.
To fund his excavations, Masson had riskily contacted the East India Company's Resident in Kutch, Henry Pottinger, who was known to have a passion for antiquities. Pottinger was hooked and sent Masson money so he could continue his work. Unknown to Masson, however, the East India Company's Spy-Master, Captain Claude Wade, had come to know of his real identity. Wade "loved bribery so much that he was known as "baksheesh sahib," or "Mr Payoff," and "every piece of intelligence from Afghanistan went through him." He was intimately concerned with the political maneuverings of the ruling Afghans in Kabul, and he was in need of a new spy in there. After following Masson's every recent move, he thought Masson "would be perfect for the job." So, he persuaded the East India Company to offer Masson a pardon in return for spying for them. Masson had no choice but to agree, but he hated every minute of spying on his former friends. Nevertheless, he was a good spy, but he was disgusted, later, when his reports were distorted to support arguments for the British invasion of Afghanistan.
Wade, however, became convinced Masson has been playing a double game and was spying for the Russians, so he had him imprisoned. Masson was eventually cleared of this charge, but meanwhile all his journals and papers had been stolen, lost, or destroyed. His services were no longer required by the East India Company, he received no compensation for his years in Wade's prison, and he returned to England sad and angry at the fate of Afghanistan. Although he only ever recovered a few of his papers, he did eventually manage to complete his book, but it received poor reviews and he made no money from it, and in spite of his brief period of fame amongst archaeologists, he never received the recognition he deserved. He died a poor and disappointed man, buried in an unmarked grave in a churchyard in East London.
Richardson is Associate Professor of Classics at Durham University. His brief biography at the end of this book says he is "fascinated by characters on the edge of histories," and that he "tells tales that seem a little too strange to be true." Masson's life was clearly a gift for him, and he tells this tale with the imaginative flair of all good storytellers, setting the scene, picking out the exciting bits, adding a little Sufi poetry, and making the most of the many colorful characters Masson met. That he leaves a few questions unanswered—such as how Masson, seemingly from a poor area of London, managed by the age of 21 to have learned to read Latin and Greek—may be due to a lack of historical evidence, but is perhaps to be expected from a storyteller who needed to pack so much information into a very entertaining book.
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