Hester Stanhope (1776-1806), who came from a wealthy, aristocratic British family, served early in her life as a chief-of-staff of sorts to Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger. She then left England for the Middle East, where she was the first to convince the Ottoman rulers to allow archaeological excavation in the land of Israel. Shirly Seidler writes (free registration required):
Stanhope was an adventurer who often scandalized people, but always got her way. In the early 19th century, she did everything women weren’t supposed to do: roamed the Middle East by herself, wore male clothing, rode astride rather than sidesaddle, and smoked pipes with sheikhs. She was called the queen of the desert. And even though she didn’t find the treasure she sought, she was an archaeological pioneer. . . .
[Stanhope] reached Lebanon . . . in 1812. There, she visited the Mar Elias monastery near Sidon, where the monks showed her an Italian scroll that told of a great treasure buried in Ashkelon in Palestine. Stanhope promptly decided to hunt for the treasure.
When she asked . . . for a permit to dig in Ashkelon, [the Ottoman authorities] initially refused, because that was an era when Western archaeologists routinely stole antiquities for Western museums. But after Stanhope promised to give them the treasure if she found it, the Ottoman authorities grew enthusiastic and ordered the governors of Damascus, Acre, and Jaffa to assist her.
“You have to understand that there was no archaeology in the land of Israel until the 1920s,” explains [the historian Gad] Sobol. “But suddenly, along comes a woman dressed like a man, riding a horse, who enters Damascus and gets what she wants. . . . After Lady Stanhope, the Ottomans no longer feared archaeologists.”
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