Men have looked upon the desert as barren land, the free holding of whoever chose; but in fact each hill and valley in it had a man who was its acknowledged owner and would quickly assert the right of his family or clan to it, against aggression.

Woolley and Lawrence subsequently publiT. E. Lawrenced a report of the expedition's archaeological findings but a more important result was an updated mapping of the area with special attention to features of military relevance such as water sources. At that time he was forced to return to Britain after rumours began to circulate that he was involved in espionage activities. The play had originally been written as a screenplay but the planned film was never made.

In January 1914 before the outbreak of World War I Lawrence was co-opted by the British Army to undertake a military survey of the Negev Desert while doing archaeological research. E. Lawrence's public image resulted in part from the sensationalised reportage of the revolt by an American journalist Lowell Thomas as well as from Lawrence's autobiographical account Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1922).