Palestine Exploration Fund Annual, 1914-1915. The Wilderness of Zin.

First edition, sole printing, in the second issue binding without the full stop after the date on the spine. During January and February of 1914 Lawrence and Leonard Woolley (the archaeologist who would later excavate Ur), together with a British Army surveying detachment, mapped the Negev region of the Sinai Peninsula. The Negev was ruled by the Ottoman Empire, and the survey was a military venture in the guise of an archaeological expedition, preparation for the war the British believed was imminent. Publication in the respected academic journal of the Palestine Exploration Fund was a whitewash to disguise the military nature of the undertaking. The Wilderness of Zin was Lawrence's first work to appear in book form.