Jonathan was born 21 December, 1951, in Coventry, the son of Ronald and Jean Tubb, younger brother of Susan. His father was a pharmacist, and growing up Jonathan helped him in his pharmacy, learning much about the compounding of medicines. Initially determined to follow his father’s profession, he began a course in biochemistry, but was frustrated by the prospect of the many years of study before he could even contemplate any original research, so switched to numismatics, having been a keen collector of Medieval coins. This field, however, did not offer the opportunity for travel and work in the field, so he switched again, this time to Levantine archaeology, enrolling at the Institute of Archaeology of the University of London (as it then was). His parents, unhappy with this second change of course, told him he must fund himself, which he did by playing saxophone in London nightclubs. Music was always a major part of his life. He had a wonderful collection of CDs, and built many of his own instruments, especially reproductions of Medieval wind instruments.
While a student at the Institute of Archaeology he took part in excavations at Tell Abu Salabikh, in Southern Iraq, Tell Brak, in Northern Syria, and Tell en Nebi Mend, near Homs, in western Syria, where he spent fourteen seasons, latterly as Assistant Director. This last had been identified as the site of the famous Battle of Kadesh between Rameses II of Egypt and Muwatallis, King of the Hittites c. 1274 bce (although Jonathan was later to argue that the true site was slightly further north).
In 1979 Jonathan joined the British Museum as Curator of Levantine Antiquities. When he started the collection was tiny, much of it acquired in the nineteenth century, and mainly consisting of pieces donated by travellers in the region, rather than artefacts from stratified excavations, a handful of which were displayed in the ‘Palestine Room’, a cubbyhole off the west stairs. Jonathan sought to transform this into a proper Levant Gallery which would showcase the culture of the region from the Stone Age to the Hellenistic Period. To that end, he persuaded the Trustees to buy the Lachish collection, which was the product of the British excavations at Tell ed-Duweir in the 1930s from the Institute of Archaeology, more than 1,600 objects. This dramatically expanded the collection and complemented the famous Assyrian reliefs from the palace of Sennacherib depicting the siege of Lachish, acquired by the Museum in the 1840s.
Jonathan initiated the first British Museum excavations in the Levant since those of Woolley and Lawrence at Carchemish in 1910-1921. His first excavation was an Early Bronze Age IV cemetery at Tiwal esh-Sherqi in the Jordan Valley in 1984. This was eminently successful and resulted in a site report published by the British Museum. From here he went on, with the encouragement of Professor J.B. Pritchard of the University of Pennsylvania, to resume excavations at the large double mound of Tell es-Sa’idiyeh, 10 km further north in the Jordan Valley in 1985, where he carried out 10 seasons of excavations finishing in 1996. This site has a deeply stratified occupation beginning with the Chalcolithic Period (only reached in a limited area), a massive Early Bronze Age II palace on the Lower Tell, with areas dedicated to the processing of grapes, olives and weaving. This palace was found to have been in use, with rebuildings, through three strata, until a catastrophic fire in Stratum II, following which there was a further, somewhat scrappy re-occupation. On the Upper Tell some 17 strata were identified, from early Islamic structures in Stratum I to Late Bronze Age structures in Stratum XVII. Associated with the Late Bronze Age and Iron Ages on the Upper Tell was the cemetery on the Lower Tell, which yielded a wealth of objects suitable for display. The generosity of the Department of Antiquities of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, which divided these finds with the British Museum, so that the Museum’s collection and the resulting displays were again dramatically increased, should be particularly noted. Jonathan also went on to direct excavations at Ras al-Hadd, Oman, where work was carried out in the local fort, dating to the eighteenth-nineteeth centuries, and in the surrounding town to investigate the occupation of the area in the Iron Age.
Figure 1. Jonathan Tubb at the launch of the PEF in its new headquarters in Greenwich on the 19th of May 2019 (Photo by Christian Young).
Figure 2. Jonathan Tubb at the Iraq Study Day at the British Museum on the 13th of May 2022 (Photo by Felicity Cobbin).
It was during the work at Tell es-Sa’idiyeh that one of our mentors, colleagues, and friends, the late Peter Dorrell, remarked to me that Jonathan was the finest archaeologist he had ever known, an opinion which I shared. As an archaeologist, he rejected the antiquarian view that the purpose of archaeology should be to illustrate the information gained from the ancient texts, in favour of allowing the ancient remains to tell their own story. Where that story could be linked to, and sometimes illustrated by, the texts, carefully and critically read, that was always to be done, but those texts must never be a Procrustean Bed into which the archaeological remains are thrust. Among other things, this led him to adopt the low dating for the Iron Age material, identifying the Iron Age II material as Omrid, not Davidic-Solomonic, ninth century, rather than the Albrightian dating to the tenth century. This was absolutely in keeping with his overall modernist outlook.
Jonathan joined the Executive Committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund (PEF) in 1991 and was an active member for ten years. In 2001 he was elected Chairman, serving in this role until 2009, following which he was elected President. During his time on the Executive Committee, as Chairman, and as President he continually advocated the modernising of the Fund, with the aim of revitalising and activating it, not in the pioneering role it played in the nineteenth century, but in a role suited to the changed world of the twentieth century. This began with the modernising of the Fund’s publication programme, a new look for the Palestine Exploration Quarterly, and the revival of the Fund’s long inactive ‘Annual’ monograph series. He oversaw the refurbishment of the office and library, and the cataloguing of the collection, to facilitate research. While it had long been recognised by the Officers and Committee that the Fund’s quarters, in an eighteenth-century building, were unsuited to its needs, it was only during Jonathan’s time as President that it became possible to move to a new, modern building, carefully fitted out to suit the Fund’s needs going forward. Altogether, Jonathan helped to change the Fund from a decaying nineteenth-century relic into a modern, dynamic academic society, whose work now does more to promote the study of the ancient and modern Levant than it had done since the outbreak of WWII brought work in the region to a halt.
Rupert Chapman
16 November, 2023