Barbara Toy followed the Mediterranean coastline of North Africa, travelling through what was then French Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, to Cyprus, then down through Lebanon, Syria and then through Jordan to Iraq. While in Iraq she visited several archaeological sites, including in May 1951 Sir Max Mallowan's excavations at Nimrud where his wife Agatha Christie was helping with processing the finds. The work on the site had just finished, and the finds for that season included the stele of King Assur-nasir-pal II. Her journey home is not described in the book, although in her second book "A Fool in the
Excavations at the Temple Mount Excavations at the Temple Mount A number of archaeological excavations at the Temple Mount—a celebrated and contentious religious site in the Old City of Jerusalem—have taken place over the last 150 years. The first were undertaken by the British Royal Engineers in the 1870s. Since Israel took control of the Old City in 1967, archaeological excavations in the vicinity of the Mount have been undertaken by Israel and the Jordanian/Palestinian-led Jerusalem Islamic Waqf. Both excavations have been controversial and criticized. Israeli and Jewish groups have criticized excavations conducted by the "Waqf", the Muslim authority in charge of the Al-Aqsa Mosque.