A British diplomat and archaeologist who was one of the major pioneers of Assyriol-ogy. While on an assignment in Iraq in 1845, Layard was drawn to the still largely unexplored ruins of ancient Assyrian cities. He later wrote:
These huge mounds of Assyria made a deep. . . impression on me. ... A deep mystery hangs over Assyria, [and] Babylonia.... With these names are linked great nations and great cities dimly shadowed forth in history; mighty ruins in the midst of deserts, defying, by their very desolation and lack of definite form, the description of the traveler; the remnants of the mighty races still roving over the land; the fulfilling. . . of prophecies; the plains to which the Jew and the Gentile alike look as the cradle of their race. (Nineveh and Its Remains, vol. 1, pp. 2-3)
Layard first began digging at Nimrud, the site of the ancient Assyrian city of Kalhu. There he eventually unearthed nearly 2 miles (3.2km) of finely carved relief sculptures depicting the exploits of the Assyrian kings. One of the more exciting moments at Nimrud came when some of Layard’s Arab workers discovered a huge carved stone head and were frightened because they thought they had dug up a mythical monster. “On reaching the ruins,” Layard later recalled,
I descended into the newly opened trench, and found. . . an enormous human head. . . . [It was] the upper part of a figure, the remainder of which was still buried in the earth. I at once saw that the head must belong to a winged lion or bull. . . . I was not surprised that the Arabs had been amazed and terrified at this apparition. . . . This gigantic head. . . rising from the bowels of the earth, might well have belonged to one of those fearful beings which are described in the traditions of the country as appearing to mortals, slowly ascending from the regions below. One of the workmen, on catching the first glimpse of the monster, had thrown down his basket and run [away] as fast as his legs could carry him. (A Popular Account of Discoveries at Nineveh, pp. 47-48)
Later, Layard excavated at the mound of Kuyunjik, near modern Mosul, site of ancient Nineveh, and discovered the library-archive of Assyria’s King Ashurba-nipal, including some twenty-four thousand cuneiform tablets. Also at Nineveh, he revealed the magnificent palace of King Sennacherib.
Over the course of the next few years, Layard sent thousands of sculptures and artifacts to London’s British Museum, where they became the core of that institution’s impressive Assyrian collection. He published several books about his adventures and discoveries, most notably Nineveh and Its Remains (1849) and Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon (1853). In time, Layard went back into public service and served as Britain’s ambassador to Constantinople beginning in 1877.
See Also: Assyriology; Nimrud; Nineveh; palaces; Palace Without Rival
World History
