Sir Austen Henry Layard’s excavation of the ancient site of Nineveh provided crucial evidence of the antiquity and achievement of Assyrian civilization.
Although he is recognized as the one of the premier British archaeologists of the nineteenth century, Austen Henry Layard was not trained as a professional archaeologist, nor did he set out to discover the ancient ruins of Nineveh that he brought to life for the Victorian public. Like other educated Victorians, Layard did not confine his intellectual pursuits to a single discipline or subject. He was, therefore, well equipped for the range of experiences and occupations that marked his spectacular life.
The son of Peter John Layard, a member of the colonial civil service in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), Austen Henry Layard was born in France and moved at the age of three to Florence, Italy. There, he became fluent in Italian and familiar with the masterpieces that had become the subject of intensive pursuit in European intellectual circles. As a boy, Layard struggled with the restrictions of formal schooling. To focus his mind, his father tried to steer his son toward the legal profession. An uncle, Charles Layard, suggested that his nephew practice law in Ceylon, and thus, on July 10, 1839, he set out on the journey that would ultimately lead to his travelogue Nineveh and Its Remains: With an Account of a Visit to the Chaldæan Christians of Kurdistan, and the Yezidis, or Devil-Worshippers, and an Inquiry into the Manners and Arts of the Ancient Assyrians (1849), better known by its shorter title, Nineveh and Its Remains.
Layard set out for the east with a travel companion, Edward Mitford
Assyrian monument in Petra, photographed during the early twentieth century.
In 1845, Layard began excavating at the site of Calah, just south of Nineveh on the Tigris River. There he unearthed a treasure trove of Assyrian monuments and cuneiform inscriptions, which he sent to the eminent Assyriologist Sir Henry Creswicke Rawlinson.
In Layard’s account of his second Mesopotamian expedition, Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon, with Travels in Armenia, Kurdistan, and the Desert: Being the Result of a Second Expedition Undertaken for the Trustees of the British Museum (1853; better known as Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon), he correctly identified remains at the mound of Kuyunjik as the true Nineveh. The latter book, an account of the expedition undertaken between 1848 and 1851, presents a more comprehensive and scholarly view of the ancient sites. In the work, the suspense-filled narrative style that defined Nineveh and Its Remains is combined with academic objectivity, and the book yields a greater sense of the expedition’s magnitude and finds. Because the excavations took place before the era of photography, Layard recorded his finds in detailed drawings, which quickly captured the imagination of the public back home.
At the time of Layard’s publications, the grandeur of Nineveh was well known to Victorian Great Britain through the Bible;
Although Layard’s engaging narrative style certainly captured the imagination of his Victorian audience, most readers approached the subject first and foremost as a source of biblical proof. During the nineteenth century, Assyria was part of the living imagination of all schooled Europeans. The theme of degeneration filled literary descriptions of the ancient Middle East, as evangelical writers reasoned that the contemporary desolation of the ancient sites provided proof of the fall divined by the Hebrew prophet Nahum (seventh century
Layard’s discoveries appealed equally to British nationalism. The success of French excavations at Khorsabad and the triumphant display of the spoils at the Louvre Museum
After a short stint as undersecretary for foreign affairs, Layard was asked to assist the British government in Constantinople, where the Ottoman Empire was deteriorating. In 1855, he was named undersecretary of state in the colonial office, and in 1865 he became a member of Parliament in the House of Commons for Southwark. Layard’s sympathy for the Turks made him politically vulnerable, and in 1869, the government named him minister of Spain in order to shift him away from the region.
Earlier the same year Layard had married Enid Guest
Sir Austen Henry Layard’s finds at the sites of Nimrud and Nineveh provided material evidence of ancient Mesopotamian civilization. Supplementing the finds of the French archaeologist Paul Emile Botta
Layard’s experience overseas and his great renown led to an impressive career in politics and diplomacy, during which he expressed strong sympathy for the Ottoman Turks and struggled on their behalf in the face of British imperial interests. He is best remembered, however, for bringing the ancient Assyrian past back to life for future generations. Along with the work of Botta, Rawlinson, and others, his archaeological finds laid the groundwork for modern Assyriology. The
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Brothers, Barbara, and Julia Gergits. Dictionary of Literary Biography: British Travel Writers, 1837-1875. Detroit: Gale Research, 1996. Explores Layard’s travelogues in the context of contemporary British writing. -
Kubie, Nora Benjamin. Road to Nineveh: The Adventures and Excavations of Sir Austen Henry Layard. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1964. A detailed biography focusing on Layard’s travel and excavations. -
Larsen, Mogens Trolle. The Conquest of Assyria: Excavations in an Antique Land, 1840-1860. New York: Routledge, 1996. Describes Layard’s expeditions in the broader context of British archaeology. -
Layard, Austen Henry. Discoveries Among the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon: With Travels in Armenia, Kurdistan, and the Desert. . .. 1853. Reprint. Piscataway, N.J.: Georgias Press, 2002. Recounts Layard’s second expedition to Nineveh. Contains reproductions of more than two hundred of Layard’s own illustrations. -
_______. Nineveh and Its Remains. 1849. Reprint. Piscataway, N.J.: Georgias Press, 2004. Describes Layard’s excavations in Mesopotamia between 1845 and 1847. Intersperses descriptions of people and places with archaeological discoveries. -
Russell, John Malcolm. From Nineveh to New York: The Strange Story of the Assyrian Reliefs in the Metropolitan Museum and the Hidden Masterpiece at Canford School. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1997. Reveals the fate of the objects excavated by Layard in the 1840’s in the context of Victorian antiquarianism and collecting. -
Waterfield, Gordon. Layard of Nineveh. London: John Murray, 1963. A complete biography, including Layard’s archaeological work, political life, and later art-historical work.
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