Wendell Phillips and the Story of Mid-century Americana
Dear Mr. President,
My American Foundation for Study of Man expedition to Queen of Sheba’s Capital Marib, Yemen is in desperate situation. STOP. My relief convoy with navy medical supplies food gasoline forbidden to reach us by King Ahmed. STOP. Please personally intervene urgently with King to hold off his soldiers and allow me to evacuate my American scientists and technicians. STOP. Unless your immediate action is taken American lives will be gravely endangered.
My grateful thanks,Qataban and Sheba
February 1952. Under siege from fierce Bedouin tribesmen and the martial forces of the Emir of Yemen, after weeks of increasing misunderstanding flared into open hostility, the adventurer and archaeologist Wendell Phillips telegrams President Eisenhower to request immediate State Department assistance.
For Phillips, then 31, the dramatic episode was only a fleeting inconvenience in a career that saw him criss-cross the sun-scorched realms of the Yemen and Oman, befriend the Aga Khan, and acquire concessions to oil rights in dozens of countries that eventually left a fortune worth half a billion dollars by his death in his early fifties.
Born in California in 1921 to a gold prospector mother who had surveyed the High Sierras by pack-mule, Phillips grew-up in straitened circumstances marked by the Great Depression. When the United States entered World War II, he joined the merchant marine, traveling to ports from the Pacific to North Africa. Later he enrolled at Berkeley, and in 1943 he completed a degree in Paleontology, a prelude to his greater pursuits.
After being stricken with polio in 1945 and confined to a Maryland infirmary, Phillips initiated a correspondence with the eminent archaeologist and orientalist Professor William F. Albright, who lived nearby at Johns Hopkins University. Over the course of several months of nearly daily visits, the men debated the finer points of theoretical and field-based archaeology, the historical validity of biblical stories, and their possible locations across the Middle East.
A few years later, Phillips would again appear on Albright’s doorstep with the news that he had persuaded the President of the University of California, several distinguished naval officers including Admiral Nimitz, and a group of New England businessmen to entrust him with leading an expedition into Africa from end to end, “covering research problems in tropical medicine, paleontology, geology, anthropology, archaeology and other fields.” Philips was then in his mid-twenties. “Would you like to come along?” he asked the older man. Albright agreed immediately.
Phillips embodied the quintessential virtues of the American spirit: powerful charisma, flair for persuasion, initiative, and resolute tenacity, as well as disdain for credentialism. His African expedition, which included over fifty scholars and technicians, multiple trucks, and a prop plane, lasted for over two years. Along the way, it earned numerous newspaper headlines for its spectacular discoveries.
While Phillips was traversing the verdant expanse of the Serengeti, he met Sir Sultan Mohammed Shah, the fabulously wealthy Aga Khan and Imam of the Nizari Ismailis, who told him to look into southern Arabia, particularly into the Yemen and Oman’s southern Dhofar region. He later dined with the Sultan of Zanzibar, a cousin of the ancient Sultans of Oman, which further fed his ambition for the region. Undaunted, he would be the first American to enter this region after convincing financial backers in New England to fund the venture, a Pan American executive to provide him with aerial transport support, and several VPs of Chrysler to donate dozens of Dodge Power trucks and Fairbanks Morse generators.
***
Yemen in 1951 was a barren landscape divided by the Hajar mountain range, which ran from the Strait of Hormuz down to the ancient minarets of Sana’a. A territory of geopolitical importance for thousands of years due to its strategic position on the Red Sea and biblical renown as the central trading hub for frankincense, it had evolved into a mosaic of sheikhdoms under the Aden Protectorate, and a Sultanate. Before the onslaught of the Nasserist revolutionary forces that broke the back of Southern Arabia the following decade, it was a country of relative peace and stability, anchored by the calming presence of the Colony of Aden of the crumbling British Empire at the southernmost tip of the Arabian peninsula.
Phillips had little to worry about except contending with the occasional bandit and beggar, and the risk of being accidentally shot by stray bullets from the typical tribal salute at the time: the Arab of the desert, who lived by his rifle, also used it for greetings. For the Bedu, the proximity of the bullet to one’s person served as a measure of his esteem for you.
Phillip’s expedition into southern Arabia, the first out of four – today the battle line between the Iranian-backed Houthis and the Saudi-backed government – was an odyssey of mishaps against the backdrop of a largely medieval environment. Phillips noted the willingness of some to remain enslaved by their generational masters. In Wadi Beihan, where he set up his excavation, three thousand men and women refused freedom despite the collapse of the Red Sea slave trade. The assassin’s trade was still unionized as well: the blood money diya cost was kept stable at 707 Maria Theresa dollars, climbing to 3,000 for a sheikh. To Western sensibilities, this was an alien realm, but for Phillips, with the finesse of a diplomat, wove a tapestry of alliances and friendships with local patrons and potentates, threading the needle of its nuanced customs.
The zenith of Philips’ endeavours came when he was digging within the confines of Timna, the once-mighty capital of the ancient Kingdom of Qataban. A Somali on his team, Jama Ishmail, burst into his room, shouting excitedly in a mixture of Arabic, Somali, and English that he’d found something: a bronze lion and rider marked with ancient inscriptions that would help Philips and Albright determine the dates of the kings of Qataban. Here was a startling discovery that enabled the team to calibrate their pursuit of the enigma behind the biblical Queen of Sheba, first mentioned in Kings, which recounted her visit to King Solomon in Jerusalem.
A few days later, Phillips struck gold again. As his team excavated an ancient cemetery, a corvée worker started wailing, “Ya Sahib! Ya Sahib!” Phillips rushed to the spot and began clearing away the dirt and debris. They’d found an exquisitely preserved head of a young woman, carved in translucent alabaster. The object was of such stunning beauty, particularly to the Arab workmen who were unaccustomed to seeing a statue as fine as this one, that they christened her Miriam.
Miriam brought further successes. A tribesman, sifting through the sands, unearthed a faint yellow gleam, which, upon further careful cleaning, revealed a gold necklace of meticulous craftsmanship. At its center gleamed an upturned crescent moon, framed below and above by gold filigree that traced in Qatabanian letters a woman’s name: “HGRLT” or Hagarlat. A whisper from antiquity.
As his successful dig drew to a close, Phillips convened a farewell banquet for the local Sheikhs, consisting of an elaborate blend of sumptuous Arab fares made out of goat and rice, and the hearty meals of American cuisine, steak and fries: his closing speech thanked his local patrons for their hospitality before heading to the local airstrip to board their awaiting Dakota planes. At the last moment, one of the sheikhs rushed to Phillips with a missive for the President of the United States. As the planes took off minutes later, the hearty salutes of the Arab tribes sent dozens of bullets singing past the planes’ cockpits, a final testament to their esteem.
Phillips would resolve to return to Timna a few months later to embark upon an even more audacious enterprise: the excavation of the Temple of Venus, and the rediscovery of the dam of Marib, once considered one of the wonders of the ancient world. It would be from Marib that he would send Eisenhower his telegram.
***
Phillips’ story is a tale of exceptional daring, insatiable curiosity, and a tempered madness in line with a Western spirit that persisted until the middle of the 20th century. Young men of charisma and talent found ample avenues to pursue adventure, or could ably create them for themselves. Suffice it to say, such a disposition stands in stark contrast to the timorous mood that has dominated recent decades, where daring languishes in the shadow of mediocre convention.
For young men in the 2010s and 2020s, opportunity was more constrained, and confidence was faltering. Many of my contemporaries pine for the clarion call of adventure in distant foreign lands, yet hesitate from translating their longings into deeds. The so-called “elite” expectation, with its arid dictates, has bid men to finish their studies and tether their passions to a soulless job in the financial services industry or consulting.
But who wouldn’t willingly prefer to put together a team to probe the ancient ruins of a distant land, where bandits and graverobbers lurk amidst the shade of antiquity? Phillips’ expedition into Yemen was notably preceded by Andre Malraux in 1934 during that time’s Saudi invasion of Yemen; Malraux had previously adventured into Indochina and later became De Gaulle’s Minister of Culture.
Western civilization today is hypnotized by pallid conformity and low expectations. Nowhere is this clearer than in the fact that heroic male archetypes today tend to be sports stars or fictional characters. Young men aren’t informed about the charismatic real-life heroes they could take inspiration from, and become transfixed by stunted and cliched social media images.
Wendell Phillips is a much better model. Although archaeological projects are seldom associated today with material success, Phillips’ daring expeditions into southern Yemen saw him build a fortune in the nascent oil industry of the region. But in order to get there, he had to keep taking risks and putting it all on the line.
***
In February 1952, when Wendell dispatched his emergency telegram to President Eisenhower, it seemed his position was about to collapse. Under virtual siege at his archaeological site in Marib – the reputed location of the Queen of Sheba’s palace – he was compelled to seek refuge in neighbouring Dhofar, a province of what was then called the Sultanate of Muscat and Oman – abandoning over a million dollars worth of expedition equipment and supplies.
Dhofar, a verdant Eden the size of Ohio, had been renowned since biblical times for its lush hills and cities amid a barren peninsula thanks to the “khareef” or monsoon season. Taking refuge in the leafy paradise of the capital city of Salalah, Phillips befriended the ruler of Oman, Sultan Said bin Taimur, and began a friendship with the country that would endure into the reign of Sultan Qaboos in the 70’s.
In 1952, Oman had not yet struck oil on the scale of the Saudis or Iraqis. But the advent of Phillips seemed to augur a positive signal. “And by the will of Allah we shall have oil,” the Sultan told Phillips, “for I am granting you the oil concession for Dhofar.” The two men drew up an agreement on the spot, completing the formalities by early 1953, with Phillips signing in the name of the Philpryor Corporation – combining his name with the name of one of his Pan American VP buddies who had backed his past expeditions, Sam Pryor.
The Dhofar deal instantly made Phillips a millionaire after he sold a quarter of his interest for a million and a half dollars, retaining the rest in case oil was discovered, which it was. Despite initially being dismissed as unprofitable, he found an operator willing to develop the concession and agreed to a 2.5% share of the profits in the manner of the infamous Calouste Gulbenkian, the “Mr. Five Percent.” Thus began a new chapter of Phillip’s career.
In 1955, he struck a deal with King Idris of Libya, securing an interest of 3% in an oil concession spanning 9,000 square miles, which soon yielded nearly a million dollars annually in royalties. It had taken a Byzantine process to get hold of the concession from an infirm King Idris, who would grant audiences only to official delegations. Somehow catching a military delegation to Tobruk, led by Harold E. Talbott, Secretary of the Air Force, he gained entry into the king’s antechamber following the group’s consultations with the king and royal court, and adroitly engaged the elderly monarch in a discourse not about oil, but about archaeology. It was enough to secure a second audience, this time about oil.
Phillips’ entry into the oil business changed the course of his life. Instead of haggling with local workers over the “baksheesh” payments they would receive for helping with his digs, he was now haggling with the rulers of states from Oman to Venezuela, and organizing consortia of industrialists seeking concessions in the Persian Gulf and Australia.
Phillips’ short but fully-lived life ended in 1975. In a little over fifty years, he had made the aegis of willing into reality, been instrumental in the development of several countries, and made decisive contributions to archaeology and history, writing books that were praised by scholars and laymen alike.
From unlikely beginnings as a poor paleontologist fresh out of Berkeley, he helped remake the world. His sense of style was ebullient, from staffing his archaeological corps with pretty, slim, and very intelligent young women who adored him whilst donning two pearl-handled Colt 45s on his waist, or in running his global oil enterprises from his villa perched on the side of a volcano in Hawaii. Such feats were achieved through a mixture of proving himself worthy of the trust of men far wealthier and more powerful than he, which was returned through a legacy of good works, which included microfilming for the Library of Congress the ancient books of the monasteries of St. Catherine’s atop Mount Sinai.
In 1954, he was named as one of the Top Ten Young Men of 1954 by Junior Chamber International, a curated list that also included Chuck Yeager and Robert Kennedy. One does wonder whether the calibre of men featured in such a list would be reproduced in today’s world, beyond the usual assortment of tech and finance figures.
As the world again embraces a bolder and more virile spirit, it would do well to remember the example of Wendell Phillips. As a pure exemplar of the midcentury Americana ethic of life and intrepid conduct, his name ought to kindle inspiration in the hearts of millions of young Americans. By emulating his example, much of the shadows of cynicism and depression that afflict young men may be vanquished, ushering in a new era of revitalized purpose and aspiration beyond the borders of the West.
Eric-Andrei Cantacuzino Geafar is a consultant working at the nexus of geopolitics, trade, and AI. He grew up across Europe and the GCC and previously worked as an advisor to an Emirati official. He is a graduate of Utrecht University in Economics and Applied Data Science. He can be followed @ericuzino.
