Wendell Phillips

Wendell Phillips AA AB
Born	1921
Died	1975
Residence	98 Fairfield Ave, Box 503, Route 3, Concord, California; Dept of Paleonotology, University of California, Berkeley
Occupation	archaeologist palaeontologist
Society Membership membership ordinary fellow societies Society of Vertebrate Paleontology University of California Geologic Society

Notes

House Notes

birthday 25 Sept 1921
occupation United States Merchant Marine

Notes From Elsewhere

Wendell Phillips was in Marib, Yemen, searching for clues about the storied Queen of Sheba, when local tribesmen took him and his team captive. It was 1951, and Phillips hurriedly sent a cable to President Truman: “Unless your immediate action is taken, American lives will be gravely endangered.” Abandoning the project, he and his colleagues managed to escape with little more than the clothes on their backs. “Absolutely everything else was to be left in Marib,” he later wrote.
People have tried to make relatable comparisons to Phillips; some have gone with Lawrence of Arabia, others a real-life Indiana Jones. At age 26, armed with a degree in paleontology and experience in the Merchant Marines, he began his adventures in Africa. Then in 1949, at 28, he went to South Arabia. There, he uncovered artifacts from the city of Timna, once located along ancient trade routes. No western archaeologist had ever been there before.

Those Timna findings and the details of Phillips' legendary life are the focus of an exhibition at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, “Unearthing Arabia: The Archaeological Adventures of Wendell Phillips”, open through June 2015. More than 70 artifacts are on display and date as far back as the 8th century B.C.E.
A 1955 New York Times article said Phillips combined “the qualities of vision, courage, curiosity and enthusiasm with the cocksureness of a swashbuckling adventurer, the coolness of a gambler and the cunning of an American backwoodsman.”

Being of military age at the onset of World War II, Phillips served his country as a merchant marine aboard transport ships—an experience that took him to ports of call in North Africa and the Mediterranean.
After later obtaining a degree in paleontology at the University of California, Berkeley, Phillips conceived the idea of an extensive continent-wide African expedition. After many months of fund-raising, Phillips launched his first expedition: a massive archaeological dig in a remote area of southern Arabia in what is now present-day Yemen. The product of this undertaking is featured in the Sackler exhibit.
During his career, Phillips microfilmed more than 2 million pages of manuscripts at the Monastery of St. Catherine in the Sinai; led the first major scientific expeditions ever to explore South Arabia; and for 10 years, beginning in the early 1950s, led expeditions in Oman, concentrating primarily in the Dhofar province.

Phillips’ team decoded the timeline of Arabian history that remains the definitive narrative for archaeologists today.
Phillips knew and loved the Arabian desert like few other Westerners. Of all his honors, he was proudest of the fact that he had been declared a Bedouin sheikh of the Bal-Harith tribe—the only American so honored.
Known as the world’s richest archaeologist, Phillips derived his wealth from numerous oil leases. The world’s largest individual holder of oil concessions at the time of his death in 1975, at age 54, his personal wealth was estimated in excess of $120 million ($471 million in today’s dollars).

Wendell Phillips graduated from the University of California with a degree in paleontology in 1943. At the age of twenty-seven, he participated in his first expedition to Africa and Egypt. Two years later he led his own expedition to southern Arabia. He also founded the American Foundation for the Study of Man (AFSM) in 1949 with the mission to “conduct scientific research, study and investigate man and his habitats with emphasis on archaeological investigation, excavation, preservation, analysis and dissemination of scientific results.”
In 1950 and 1951, Phillips and his team excavated the site of Timna in the Wadi Beihan, where they unearthed one of the largest temples in the region, several important residences, and the Timna cemetery. The discovery of a wealth of inscriptions at Timna established a solid basis for South Arabian paleography, and the pottery finds from different occupational levels at Hajar bin Humeid allowed the creation of a chronology for the region.
In the spring of 1951 Phillips and his team moved to Marib in Yemen to fulfill his dream of excavating the Awam Temple, associated with the Queen of Sheba. Local tribal hostilities, however, prevented the team from completing the season. Under the guidance of Phillips’s sister, Merilyn Phillips Hodgson, the American Foundation for the Study of Man resumed work at Marib from 1998 until 2006.

Publications

External Publications

autobiography, Sheba’s Buried City 1958

Qataban and Sheba: Exploring ancient kingdoms on the Biblical spice routes of Arabia
1 Jan 1955 by Wendell Phillips

Oman: A history
1 Jan 1967 by Wendell Phillips

Unknown Oman
1 Jan 1966 by Wendell Phillips

An explorer's life of Jesus Hardcover – 1975
by Wendell Phillips

Related Material Details

RAI Material

census