The railway engineer who convinced a pair of empires to let him lead the first archaeological excavations of Ephesus in the 1860s. The photographer driven mad by unsupported demands for spectacular discoveries at Mesopotamian Nippur in the 1890s. The trail-blazing female architect-archaeologist who, despite her hearing impairment, introduced the monumental Hellenistic burial at Mount Nemrut to the globe after World War II. For each of these early explorers, doing archaeology in the ancient Near East was undoubtedly always very difficult, but perhaps never boring. However, these three and others had something else important in common, they each strived to introduce careful scientific practice to a discipline all too often entrenched in amateur treasure-hunting. Investigating their stories, both personal and professional, provides us with an opportunity to better understand the crucial interplay between scientific thought and early archaeological practice, against a backdrop of often unintended adventures.