Archaeology is a delight, it has a habit of presenting you with surprises at the oddest of times. A week after we arrived, after a very long day of digging, the wonder that is Jebel Moya offered us another surprise: Henry Wellcome’s teapot. Put the kettle on and I’ll tell you the story.
Fath el Rahman is one of the villlage’s respected elders. He is our gracious host. Despite a busy job in Sennar, he always finds the time to see how we are doing and to answer our many questions. We spent a very happy couple of hours looking at pictures from the days of Henry Wellcome. Fath identified every rock in every photograph. Later that day, he showed us the teapot.
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The teapot
Fath sat down and told me the story.
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Fath el Rahman
Fath’s great grandfather was an expedition cook, part of Henry Wellcome’s vast camp. Wellcome had always intended to return to Sudan after the First World War, but alas this was not to be. Wellcome died in 1936 and by 1938 Uribe had packed up and left the Sudan for the last time. The plaque in the House of Boulders serves as a poignant reminder of those days.
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The Wellcome-Uribe plaque
We do not know what happened to the vast camp, or its extent in 1938. We do know, however, that nothing ever gets wasted in Sudan. Fath’s great grandfather appears to have kept the teapot as a memento. It has been stored safely for all these years, and it is not used to make tea (of which a lot is consumed in Sudan). The teapot is treasured as a memory of the expedition, it is an object of admiration and an excellent conduit for reminiscing and telling stories.
You may be tempted to make a dent in the romance by asking if this is really Henry’s teapot. Having spent many hours trawling through the archives, I can confidently say that anything and everything at the camp belonged to Henry – so in that sense it most definitely is his teapot. Besides, it bears the name of the village and the logo that Henry himself designed. It was used on all correspondence relating to Jebel Moya and at some point he struck a bronze pendant bearing the design.
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The Jebel Moya pendant (Wellcome Collection)
Henry Wellcome’s teapot is now part of the history of Jebel Moya. In the 21st century, I am very lucky to have a standing invitation to drink coffee with Fath and his beautiful family.
The Jebel Moya Project 