I met Editha roaming across the barren dustscapes of the Sur, aka Tyre, Hippodrome (which incidentally is the best-preserved Roman hippodrome in existence) and snapped a few choice photos of her ethereal presence flitting in and about the stone monuments.

Editha had once had ambitions as formidable as those of her old schoolmate Gertrude Bell, the adventurer who arrived in Mandate Mesopotamia an amateur archaeologist and left as the founder of the newly independent Iraq’s Antiquities Department.

Unlike Gertrude, however, Editha had been distracted en route to imperial greatness by a particularly stunning collection of Oriental silks nearby and had thereafter resigned herself to passing her days running footraces alongside the ghosts of bygone Roman chariots. See the entirety of this most stupendous photo essay here.