The book was supposedly started on 2 April 1950 at the expedition house at Nimrud where she was working on the excavation of that ancient city with her second husband, the archaeologist Max Mallowan.
European travellers of the 19th century noted the presence of archaeological remains in the Balikh Valley, but the first investigations were not carried out until 1938, when the English archaeologist Sir Max Mallowan (husband of author Agatha Christie) spent six weeks investigating five archaeological sites dating from the seventh to the second millennium BCE.
His excavations included the prehistoric village at Tell Arpachiyah, and the sites at Chagar Bazar and Tell Brak in the Upper Khabur area (Syria).
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He was also the first to excavate archaeological sites in the Balikh Valley, to the west of the Khabur basin.
The fortuitous discovery in 1952 of a cache of diplomatic correspondence in the chancery offices of the Northwest Palace in a room designated as ZT 4 at Kalhu, modern Nimrud, by archaeologists led by Max Mallowan, has shed much light on events of the Mukin-zēri rebellion.
In 1943, during the Second World War, archaeologist Max Mallowan, husband of novelist Agatha Christie, was based at Sabratha as an assistant to the Senior Civil Affairs Officer of the Western Province of Tripolitania.
In Ashes and Broken Brickwork of a Logical Theory she set off on the trail of Agatha Christie, when Christie visited Mesopotamia in 1930 as a photographer for the British Museum together with her future husband Max Mallowan, an archaeologist.
The book was inspired by Christie's own trips to Baghdad with her second husband, archaeologist Sir Max Mallowan, and is also one of few Christie novels belonging to the action and spy fiction genres, rather than to mysteries and whodunnits.
Max Roach | Max Martin | Mad Max | Max Ernst | Max Bygraves | Max Weber | Max Bruch | Max McLean | Max | Max Factor | Max Beckmann | Max Baucus | Max von Sydow | Max Reger | Max Beerbohm | Max Ophüls | Max Müller | Max Headroom | Max Bill | Peter Max | Max Reinhardt | Max Planck Society | Max Azria | Max Payne | Max Mosley | Max Mirnyi | Max Mallowan | Max Liebermann | Max Eastman | Max Born |
He was also a good friend of British archaeologist Sir Max Mallowan, former widower of Agatha Christie.
The subject of this dedication is Christie's second husband, Max Mallowan (1904–1978) and is one of four books dedicated to him, either singly or jointly, the others being Murder on the Orient Express (1934), Come Tell Me How You Live (1946) and Christie's final written work, Postern of Fate (1973).