The title

The title came first. Seven Pillars of Wisdom is based on a quotation from the Bible's Book of Proverbs, Chapter IX, verse 1 - 'Wisdom hath builded her house, she hath hewn out her seven pillars' - and Lawrence had previously used it for what he described in a letter to Robin Buxton, a war-time colleague and later financial manager for SP, as a 'youthful indiscretion-book', which 'recounted adventures in seven type-cities of the East (Cairo, Bagdad, Damascus etc) & arranged their characters into a descending cadence: a moral symphony. It was a queer book, upon whose difficulties I look back with a not ungrateful wryness'. (1) Written when he was in his early twenties, the work was burned 'as immature' in August 1914, and so as a 'reminiscence, for my ear' (2) of this first literary attempt, he chose the title for his magnum opus - and 'because I couldn't think of anything short and fit', as he wrote to RSM H H Banbury of the Royal Tank Corps, to whom he also explained the Proverbs quotation as 'meaning a complete edifice of knowledge', adding that the 'figure "seven" implies completeness in the Semitic languages'. (3)

Lawrence was to identify the seven cities of the first book more fully in History, as Constantinople, Cairo, Smyrna, Aleppo, Jerusalem, Urfa and Damascus - but just a few months later, in June 1927, he made the following note to assist Robert Graves in his writing of Lawrence and the Arabs: 'Wrote travel book (later destroyed in MS) called The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, about Cairo, Smyrna, Constantinople, Beyrout, Aleppo, Damascus, Medina.' (4) Bagdad, mentioned in the letter to Buxton, had been dropped from the list in both of these later statements, but since in the years when it was written Lawrence had not visited all the places named, it must be assumed that the work was in any case largely one of imagination, reinforced by the knowledge accumulated from his reading on Arabia and his own travels to date.

Questioned more closely in 1933 by another of his early biographers, Basil Liddell Hart, as to whether the title was based on the Book of Proverbs or something further, Lawrence replied that it was 'more fully elucidated in Jewish Rabbinical embroideries (mediaeval Jewish) beginning with "M"' (5), and Liddell Hart provides a lengthy footnote of information obtained from the Warden of Wadham College and Professor T W Mearon of Mansfield College, Oxford, which, however throws no more light on any possible deeper intent behind Lawrence's choice of the title:

'The Midrash gives two explanations of She hath hewn out her seven pillars: first, that she (Wisdom) was hewn out of seven firmaments and given to mankind; second, that the Seven Pillars are the seven lands. "If man (or Adam) is righteous and keeps the Law he will inherit seven lands; and if not, he will be dispersed into seven lands." This second explanation may have been known to Lawrence. Other explanations of the Seven Pillars are: the seven books of the Law, the seven days of Creation (Rashi); the seven years of Gog [Ezekiel, XXXIX, 9].

'The Midrash explains Wisdom hath builded her house as follows: "First, this is the Law which hath built all the worlds. Second, what is this except that the Holy One hath said, 'If a man is righteous and learns Lore and Wisdom, it is reckoned before the Holy One as if he had created the heavens and as if he had established the whole world.' " '

1	L 219, R V Buxton, 22.IX.23
2	L 327, Edward Garnett, 1.XII.27
3	L 302, H H Banbury, 20.4.27
4	Biog G, p 49
5	Biog LH, p 130

Next section - Lawrence as 'architect'

The writing of Seven Pillars of Wisdom - full listing