Secret desert camp used by First World War hero Lawrence of Arabia is discovered intact with rum jars and a campfire
- Academic stumbled upon a sketch map of the camp by RAF pilot from 1918
- Archaeologists found gin bottles and spent cartridges still in Jordan desert
- TE Lawrence stayed in the camp to launch guerilla raids on Turkish troops
- British wanted Arab forces to beat the Turks, who were allied with Germany
- Modern conflict archaeologist: It's our equivalent of Tutankhamun
A secret desert camp used by Lawrence of Arabia has been found intact almost 100 years after he left it.
The hideout in modern-day Jordan was still littered with spent cartridges and broken gin bottles when a team of archaeologists found it - thanks to an RAF pilot's vaguely-sketched map.
It was used as a vital base by Thomas Edward Lawrence, the British intelligence officer who would pass into legend for his guerilla raids against Turkish forces in the First World War.
A piece of history: This photograph of an armoured Rolls-Royce helped researchers track down a desert camp (pictured) from which Lawrence of Arabia launched guerilla attacks on German-allied Turks
Find: British archaeologists have found a secret desert camp used by TE Lawrence, pictured, almost 100 years after he left it with a campfire and empty tins of food still intact. His biographer called it a 'time capsule'
Immortalised: Peter O'Toole (left) played the war hero in the 1962 blockbuster Lawrence of Arabia
Evidence: The men returned to excavate and discovered spent cartridges and a broken SRD bottle
But the camp would have gone unnoticed for many years more had it not been for a chance discovery in the National Archives.
John Winterburn, an archaeologist at Bristol University, found a loosely-sketched map from 1918 by a pilot who recalled the camp from memory after a reconnaisance flight.
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He scoured through images on Google Earth to find a part of the desert which matched the drawing in a 10-year investigation called the Arab Revolt Project.
Finally he found the small camp, which Lawrence said was 'behind the toothed hill facing Tell Shahm station', in November 2012 exactly where he predicted it would be.
Accompanied by project directors Nicholas Saunders and Neil Faulkner, both based at Bristol, he found ashes still in a camp fire and broken biscuit boxes strewn across the 100-yard square.
Mr Faulkner told MailOnline: 'When you're talking about the field of modern conflict archaeology, it's the closest we can get to finding Tutankhamun's tomb.
The relics included a steel hawser clamp for holding or gripping steel rope (left) and gin bottle fragments (right)
Haul: The archaeologists found a spark plug from one of the armoured Rolls-Royces driven across the desert
Modern history: Another relic from the camp, which TE Lawrence would go on to describe in his memoirs
Clues: The archaeologists tracked down the ashes from the soldiers' brushwood campfire, pictured
'What was extraordinary was that we didn't expect to find anything on site. Our assumption was that we'd go there and find nothing but at least we knew where it was.
'We were looking up at the landscape rather than down, then suddenly John said: "I think that looks like a broken rum jar".
'The whole site was meticulously excavated and recorded and we pieced together fragments of the rum jar into a whole.
'It was incredibly exciting to be there and so very, very close to where Lawrence himself was.
'In his book Seven Pillars of Wisdom he has this very vivid description of eating bully beans and biscuits and drinking tea with condensed milk, watching the sparks rising into the night from the brushwood fire.
'We even found the ashes from that fire. It was astonishing.'
Mr Winterburn said finding the camp took him four years from start to finish.
The breakthrough came, he said, when he combined the sketch map with a photograph of soldiers standing with armoured Rolls-Royces next to a distinctive hill.
The location of TE Lawrence's camp, which researchers found with Google Earth and an old map in 2014
Distinctive: Mr Winterburn told MailOnline he recognised the hill by its unusual shape
Travelling in style: British forces had crossed the remote desert in an armoured Rolls-Royce, pictured
'I immediately recognised what it could be and put the pieces together,' he told MailOnline. 'I then used Google Earth to find a location precisely, and we logged the co-ordinates.
'We punched the data into a GPS receiver and marched across the desert, and there it was, exactly where we predicted. It's easy when you know how'.
He added: 'This camp had been used as a staging post for many for the epic raids on the Hejaz Railway at Tel Shahm and Mudawwara.
'Scattered in the desert floor was the remains of their last meals of rusty tin cans from Lowestoft and fragments of rum jars and gin bottles.'
Lawrence's authorised biographer Jeremy Wilson told the Sunday Times: 'It's a time capsule. Unlike on the western front, in the empty areas of the Middle East it just stays there.
'So you get a remarkable picture as if you have walked in the day after they left.'
TE Lawrence stayed at the camp in 1917 and 1918 and was joined by British officers who were used to a higher standard of accommodation - having driven across the desert in armoured Rolls-Royces.
The period in the desert would see some his most cunning attacks on Turkish supply routes, which provided a crucial distraction to Ottoman troops and allowed an Arab revolt to be victorious.
Peter O'Toole (right) starred as Lawrence of Arabia in the 1962 film as the officer who disrupted supply routes
A WAR HERO WHO HATED PUBLICITY: ASTONISHING LIFE OF TE LAWRENCE
Legendary: TE Lawrence barefoot in the desert during the campaign. He was just 46 when he died
During the First World War the Turks, allied with Germany and facing the end of their old empire, were beset by an Arab revolt which Britain wanted the Arabs to win.
Gifted operator TE Lawrence would become a crucial part of that plan.
Born in north Wales in 1888, he learned Arabic on an archaeological dig in Syria.
As he spent three years there in the run-up to the war he became sympathetic to the Arab people, who had lived under the rule of the Turkish Ottoman empire for centuries.
When the war broke out in 1914, Lawrence became an intelligence officer based in Cairo and two years later the hostilities spread into an Arab revolt.
The British Colonel became the adviser to the son of the revolt's leader, Sherif Hussein of Mecca.
Renowned for his cunning tactics, Lawrence's small band of forces hit supply routes which distracted Turkish troops from the fighting they were supposed to be doing.
His efforts were vital in helping Sherif Hussein's forces win a victory which enabled them to establish a unified state spanning large parts of the Arabian peninsula.
The story would later be immortalised by Peter O'Toole in the epic 1962 film Lawrence of Arabia.
After the war Winston Churchill appointed Lawrence as an adviser, but he quit the role as he hated the publicity it gave him.
The war hero died aged 46 in a motorcycle accident just three months after he left the RAF.
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