Youth

Austen Henry Layard was one of the great archaeological pioneers of the Victorian Age. Together with the Frenchman, Paul Emile Botta, he brought to light one of the major civilizations of the ancient world, Assyria. Of course, in a profoundly religious age, most Europeans were quite familiar with the Assyrians from the Old Testament where they appear as brutal conquerors who dragged the 10 lost tribes into captivity. Virtually nothing was known, however, of the Assyrians themselves until Botta and Layard uncovered the remains of their palaces in the plains of northern Iraq.

Fortunately for us, Layard was a prolific writer and we know a good deal about his life and career. Literally thousands of his letters along with extensive diaries and notebooks can be found in the Library of the British Museum. He published several volumes on his work and experiences in the Near East and an autobiographical work entitled Early Adventures.

Henry was born in a hotel on the Left Bank in Paris on March 5th, 1817. His father, Peter Layard, suffered from asthma and, although from a respectable family, was not a particularly wealthy man. It was much cheaper for he and his wife Marianne to live on the Continent, and the climate was better for his health. Layard spent much of his youth in France and Italy and enjoyed himself thoroughly—although he received little in the way of formal education. His parents encouraged his interest in art and literature, however, and, when the family eventually moved back to England, he was sent off to public school. He hated the whole experience and did not get along at all with his fellow students who resented his Continental airs.

Henry’s father died shortly after their return and had to rely on his mother's brother, a fairly well to do lawyer named Benjamin Austen. To please his uncle, he changed the order of his names from Henry Austen to Austen Henry and, after he finished school at the age of 17, took up an apprenticeship in his law firm, with a view to eventual partnership. But he found the office routine a complete bore and lived only for the weekends and holidays. On Sundays, he was often invited to his uncle's house where he met many of the most important people of the time—including young Benjamin Disraeli. He also met Charles Fellows, a noted ‘gentleman traveller’, who some years earlier had travelled throughout south-western Anatolia (modern Turkey), exploring the ruins of ancient Lycia. He was very helpful to Layard when it came time for him to begin his own explorations of the region-which routes to follow and which areas had archaeological potential. That same summer, he went on an extended trip to Scandinavia and St. Petersburg and, while in Copenhagen, met Christian Thomsen, founder of the Danish National Museum. Thomsen was the man who devised the Three Age System of classification for archaeological material-the Stone Age; Bronze Age; and Iron Age-and he gave Layard a personal tour of the collection.

The Journey East

Layard left London on July 10th 1839, taking the steamer to Ostende and meeting up with Mitford in Brussels. As funds were short, they intended to travel light but well armed—they each bought a double-barrelled rifle and Layard bought a pair of pistols as well. Since the planned to make detailed surveys en route (Layard had taken courses before he left London) they also purchased a sextant and compasses. He had deposited £300 with a bank in order to be able to draw on funds while he was travelling and the pair of them had received £200 from a publisher as an advance on a proposed account of their travels. They headed for Montenegro, whose mountain strongholds had never been subdued by the Turks and was the only Christian-ruled country in the Balkans, and continued through Albania and Macedonia, reaching Istanbul by the middle of June. Layard had come down with malaria on the way and was bedridden for several weeks after arriving-enduring a treatment which included blood-letting with leeches. They crossed the Hellespont at the beginning of October and headed overland through Anatolia-noting the ancient monuments and ruined sites which they passed along the way. When they reached Syria, they found the region devastated by the armies of the Egyptian pasha, Mohammed Ali, who had recently annexed all of the Levant. The people had to suffer the burden of harsh taxation by the Egyptian government and the affects of a complete breakdown of law and order—the Egyptian soldiers had not been paid in two years.

He finally reached Damascus clad only in trousers and the shirt on his back, with but a single coin, which had been overlooked by the robbers, at the bottom of his saddlebag. Fortunately, that was enough of a bribe to enable him to avoid the forty day quarantine imposed because of the plague that was ravaging the district. He finally met up with Mitford at Aleppo and the started out on the trek east to Mosul in the middle of March, 1840.
Despite all of the adversity, in later years Layard looked back with a great deal of nostalgia at his early adventures:

I look back with feelings of grateful delight to those happy days when, free and unheeded, we left at dawn the humble cottage or cheerful tent, and lingering as we listed, unconscious of distance and of the hour, found our-selves, as the sun went down, under some hoary ruin tenanted by the wandering Arab, or in some crumbling village still bearing a well-known name.

Mesopotamia

Layard and Mitford spent more than two weeks in Mosul and were particularly impressed by the ruins across the river—especially Layard who insisted on visiting them all. As he later wrote:

These huge mounds of Assyria made a deeper impression on me, gave rise to more serious thoughts and more earnest reflection than the temples of Balbec, and the theatres of Ionia….
A deep mystery hangs over Assyria, Babylonia and Chaldaea…. 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 traveller; the remnants of the mighty races still roving over the land; the fulfilling and fulfilment of prophecies; the plains to which the Jew and the Gentile alike look as the cradle of their race.
(Layard 1849, vol. I: 2-3)

While in Mosul they met the French explorer, Charles Texier, who was on his way back home after exploring the ruins of Persia where he made a number of drawings and plans of Persepolis and Pasargadae. The English Vice-Consul, a local Christian named Christian Rassam, invited the pair on a trip to the ruins of Hatra where a number of buildings of the Persian and Hellenistic periods were wonderfully preserved. As it happened, their first campsite was across the river from the ruins of Nimrud (below), a place where Layard was destined to spend a lot of time:

As the sun went down, I saw for the first time the great conical mound of Nimrud rising against the clear evening sky. It was on the opposite side of the river and not very distant, and the impression that it made upon me was one never to he forgotten. After my visit to Küyünjik and Nebi Yunus, opposite Mosul, and the distant view of Nimrud, my thought ran constantly upon the possibility of thoroughly exploring with the spade those great ruins.
(Layard 1903: 311)

Eventually, the pair decided they must be on their way and rented a kelek (a raft of inflated goat skins) to take them south to Baghdad. At Nimrud, they encountered rapids which the skipper explained were caused by the remains of a large dam built by King Nimrod. Within a week they were in Baghdad and were received by the current British Resident, Colonel Taylor. They stayed for a couple of months, visiting some of the more important ruins in the neighbourhood—especially the remains of ancient Babylon—and taking advantage of the resources of Taylor’s library.

They intended to continue overland, through Persia to India—despite the fact that war was looming between the Shah and the Sultan and that, as already mention, relations were strained between Persia and Britain. They decided to cross the Zagros mountains by way of Kermanshah and, donning local dress in order to blend in as much as possible, joined up with a small caravan composed mainly of poor Shi’ite pilgrims, returning from the holy places in southern Iraq. When they arrived at Kermanshah, they went to visit Bisitun where the cliffside bore a lengthy trilingual inscription and while they were there ran into a Frenchman named Flandin who was drawing the monument. At this point they learned that, if they wished to travel further through the Shah's dominions, they would have to seek official approval from the latter or his vizier at Hamadan.

Layard had decided to take the southern route, through Seistan—in part because it was the region where Zoroastrianism was presumed to have originated but also because of the many ruins to be found there.

The vizier refused to permit this—he regarded the pair of them as spies intent on gathering information about the routes between India and Persia. Layard was persistent, however, and proposed to proceed entirely at his own risk, without official permission or with any guarantees of their safety. Mitford, probably rightly, thought that this would be tantamount to signing their own death warrants and the two of them decided to split up. He took advantage of the vizier’s offer to provide official sanction for the more northern route to India by way of Afghanistan but Layard insisted on remaining in the vicinity in the hopes that the next year would bring a change in attitude and that he would be allowed to proceed as he desired. Although he maintained the pretence in his letters home, it is clear that by now Layard had lost interest in a career as a lawyer in Ceylon. However, he had no firm idea of what he wanted to do instead.

Among the Bakhtiaris

After Mitford had departed, Layard rode off into the mountains of Luristan and Khuzistan, dressed in the local garb (he is shown below, in Bakhtiari costume). However, the hostility of the local people coupled with recurrences of malaria forced him to turn back. So he went instead to Isfahan where he met with the Persian governor, a notoriously brutal Georgian eunuch named Manuchar Khan—his cruelty was excessive even by Persian standards. Shortly before Layard arrived he had ordered the construction of a tower out of 300 prisoners held together by mortar, which stood for weeks, long after the prisoners had died an agonizing death. In another case, he had a prisoner’s teeth extracted in order to be used as buckshot for his own execution.

The governor refused permission for Layard to travel through Seistan but did allow him to pass through the country of the Bakhtiaris to the south of Isfahan. Everyone warned him that it was a risky undertaking, that the Bakhtiaris were cruel and untrustworthy, but Layard was undaunted. After crossing their territory, he planned to continue south, to try and determine the location of ancient Susa (where the Book of Esther was set) and then travel on to Persepolis in the province of Fars. He set out in September of 1840, travelling with a caravan to Kala Tul, one of the mountain strongholds of the Bakhtiaris, but found that the chief, a man named Mehemet Taki Khan, was away.

He was in the dress which the Bakhtiari chiefs usually wore on a journey, or when on a raid or warlike expedition—a tight-fitting cloth tunic reaching to about the knees, over a long silk robe, the skirts of which were thrust into capacious trousers, fastened round the ankles by broad embroidered bands. Round his Lur skullcap of felt was twisted the lung, or striped shawl. His arms consisted of a gun, with a barrel of the rarest Damascene work, and a stock—beautifully inlaid with ivory and gold; a curved sword, or scimitar, of the finest Khorassan steel—its handle and sheath of silver and gold; a jewelled dagger of great price, and a long, highly ornamented pistol thrust in the kesh-kemer, or belt, round his waist, to which were hung his powder-flasks, leather pouches for holding bullets, and various objects used for priming and loading his gun, all of the—choicest description. The head and neck of his beautiful Arab mare were adorned with tassels of red silk and silver knobs. His saddle was also richly decorated, and under the girths was passed, on one side, a second sword, and on the other an iron inlaid mace, such as Persian horsemen use in battle. Mehemet Taki Khan was justly proud of his arms, which were renowned throughout Khuzistan. He had a very noble air, and was the very beau-idéal of a great feudal chief.

Layard was immediately called upon to treat the son—his father offering the most extravagant rewards for a cure (failure would have undoubtedly meant his life). In the event, a dose of Dover’s Powder—an opiate that induces sweating—followed by some quinine proved efficacious and the boy recovered.

His success brought him the friendship of the Khan and his wife—Khatun-jan (“The Lady of my soul”)—asked him to stay as a member of the family. She had a younger sister who was even more beautiful than her and the Khan suggested on more than one occasion that Layard convert to Islam and marry her, “the inducement was great but the temptation was resisted.” He spent the next few months hunting, training and touring the land under the Khan's protection—although, this did not prevent him being threatened and robbed on several occasions.

In the meantime, the governor had sent an army into the mountains to confront the Bakhtiari chief directly and Mehemet Taki Khan was forced to submit. He pledged his eldest son as a hostage in exchange for a fair hearing but the governor had no intention of honouring his side of the bargain and he was forced to flee to the Mesopotamian plain with the rest of his family. The Persian army was unable to penetrate the marshes and the governor offered to give him free passage and restore him to office and, despite the protests of his kinsmen, the Khan agreed to trust him once again. He entered the Persian camp with some of his followers (including Layard) and was promptly thrown in chains. Layard, who had hung in the back and had not been noticed, managed to escape in a small boat and found his way back to the others in the Marshes. The Persians then demanded that the Arabs surrender the entire family and followers of Mehemet Taki—something that Arab honour and sense of hospitality would not allow. They unanimously decided to mount a rescue operation, a night attack on the Persian camp, in which Layard was an enthusiastic participant:

The camp of an Eastern army has rarely any proper outposts, and we were almost in the midst of the Persian tents before our approach was perceived. A scene of indescribable tumult and confusion ensued. The matchlock-men kept up a continuous but random fire in the dark. The Arabs who were not armed with guns were cutting down with their swords indiscriminately all whom they met. Bakhtiari and Arab horsemen dashed into the encampment yelling their war-cries. The horses of the Persians, alarmed by the firing and the shouts, broke from their tethers and galloped wildly about, adding to the general disorder. I kept close to Au Baba Khan, who made his way to the park of artillery, near which, he had learnt, were the tents in which his brothers were confined. I was so near the guns that I could see and hear Suleiman Khan giving his orders, and was almost in front of them when the gunners were commanded to fire grape into a seething crowd which appeared to be advancing on the Matamet's pavilion. It consisted mainly of a Persian regiment, which, having failed to form, was failing back in disorder. It was afterwards found to have lost a number of men from this volley.
(Layard 1894; 261-2)

They were unable to accomplish their mission, only managing to rescue the Khan’s brother Au Kerim, but the losses to the Persians were such that they were forced to withdraw. Khatun-jan decided that the group should seek the protection of relatives in the Zagros but these proved to be faithless—one of them even clapped Layard and Au Kerim in chains. He thought his hour had come:

I was labouring under too much. anxiety, and overwhelmed by too many thoughts to be able to sleep. To he murdered in cold blood by a barbarian, far away from all help or sympathy, the place and cause of one's death to he probably forever unknown, and the author of it to escape with impunity, was a fate which could not be contemplated with indifference.
(Layard 1894: 272)

But the wife of his captor, shamed by her husband’s breach of faith, helped the pair to escape—although his companion was later recaptured when his horse threw him.

By this time, Layard had decided he had done what he could to help his friends and decided to make his way back to Mesopotamia-even so, he was caught by the Persians and was their “guest” for a time before escaping. It was now the hottest part of the summer and Layard spent several weeks travelling through a scorched landscape before reaching the Tigris near Basra. As luck would have it, there was a British merchantman anchored in the river—one of its sailors later recorded his shock at being hailed in firm Queen’s English by what appeared to be a particularly ragged native. After a brief rest (and a hot bath) he headed north to Baghdad only to be robbed repeatedly along the way and narrowly escaping death on one occasion. He arrived in Baghdad, naked and with bleeding feet, in the middle of the night and passed out next to its locked gates:

A crowd of men and women bringing the produce of their gardens, laden on donkeys, to the bazaars, were waiting for the moment when they were to he admitted. At length the sun rose and the gate was thrown open. Two cawasses of the British Residency, in their gold-embroidered uniforms, came out, driving before them with their courbashes the Arabs who were outside, to make way for a party of mounted European ladies and gentlemen. It was the same party that, on my previous visit to Baghdad, 1 had almost daily accompanied on their morning rides. They passed close to me, but did not recognise me in the dirty Arab in rags crouched near the entrance, nor, clothed as I was, could I venture to make myself known to them. But at a little distance behind them came Dr. Ross. I called to him, and he turned towards me in the utmost surprise, scarcely believing his senses when he saw me without cover to my bare head. with naked feet, and in my tattered abba.

It was weeks before he could walk normally again—although he later recovered his clothes and other effects. Some time later, he came across Mehemet Taki Khan, shackled to a dungeon wall in the town of Shuster and his womenfolk in a squalid little house:

I spent some hours daily with Khatun-jan Khanum and her companions in misfortune, who treated me as if I were one of Mehemet Taki Khan's family. I learnt much from them relating to female life and customs among Shi'a Musulmans. Their affectionate gratitude to me in return for my sympathy, which was all I could give them, was most affecting. I found in these poor sufferers qualities and sentiments which would have ennobled Christian women in a civilised country. (Layard 1894: 348)

The whole family was eventually sent to Teheran—the beautiful younger sister dying en route—where Mehemet Taki Khan eventually died in 1851.

Layard and Canning

Back in Baghdad, Layard finally received letters from home and had to address the issue of his future. Circumstances in Ceylon (the bankruptcy of his uncle there) made the prospects look less bright in that direction and his wealthy uncle, Benjamin Austen, was unwilling to make any guarantees for his future in London. He spent much of his time writing a long report on his observations in Khuzistan for the Royal Geographical Society. In the end, it was his other experiences in Khuzistan, which offered him an opportunity, for the Persian campaign against the Bakhtiaris and Marsh Arabs led to a larger conflict with Turkey. Colonel Taylor, the Resident, was keen to have Britain intervene on the side of Turkey and sent Layard to Istanbul with reports (he stopped in Mosul on the way, where he met the new French Consul, Paul Émile Botta. Part of Botta's mission was to acquire antiquities for the Louvre and he informed Layard of his intention to begin excavations at the mound of Küyünjik, which lay across the river.

Layard arrived in the Turkish capital in July of 1842, in Bakhtiari dress:

I disembarked from the steamer in the Golden Horn. Having secured a room, and deposited my scant luggage, I engaged a caïque to take me to Buyukdereh, where Sir Stratford Canning, the British Ambassador, was then residing. On arriving there I presented myself at the Embassy and delivered my letter for the Ambassador to a servant. I was told to wait, which I did for a considerable time. At length a fashionably-dressed young gentleman appeared, asked me roughly for the despatches of which I was the bearer, informed me that the Ambassador was too much occupied to see any one, and turning on his heel left the room without deigning to listen to what I had to say.

But within a few hours he received word from the ambassador himself and had a long interview with him the next day, eventually offering him a position on his staff—albeit an unofficial one.

Sir Stratford Canning was a very commanding figure, tall and handsome with firm convictions and a certainty in his own “rightness”. He was adamantly opposed to any expansion of Russian influence into the Near East and often got into hot water with his superiors in Whitehall on that account. He was convinced of the innate superiority of the British way of life and had a tendency to treat all foreigners as inferiors to varying degrees. Although he tended to be pro-Ottoman he was more than a little condescending towards the Turks whom he thought of as somewhat naughty children who had to be told what was good for them. As Canning's agent, Layard found it impossible to get any sort of official standing and remained simply a member of the ambassadors personal staff, whose wages were paid out of his pocket.

Both men supported Turkey in the boundary dispute with Persia and both supported the progressive, reformist element in the Turkish ruling class, positions that ran counter to the prevailing policies of Lord Aberdeen's government in London. During this period Layard received regular correspondence from Botta, describing the new excavations that he was conducting at the site of Khorsabad to the north of Mosul. The results so far had been spectacular, particularly the carved reliefs and statues of huge human-headed, winged bulls. He urged Layard to join him in the project—but the latter was forced to decline. However, he did use the information provided by Botta to publish a series of articles in the Malta Times, which excited great interest in Britain. He also heard from Henry Rawlinson, the new Resident in Baghdad, who expressed interest in Layard's experiences.

Rawlinson (right) was an Indian Army man who had served as military advisor to the Shah of Persia in the 1830's. He was fascinated by Oriental languages and had used his spare time to make a copy of the inscription cut into the rock face at Bisitun. The inscription was in cuneiform, the same writing system, which was used on the clay, tablets and inscriptions used by the ancient inhabitants of Mesopotamia. The text was in three different languages, one of which was in an ancient form of Persian. Using this as his starting point, Rawlinson and others were beginning to make progress in deciphering the other languages. One of these turned out to be Babylonian essentially the same as the inscriptions found in Assyria. However, it would still be several years before his understanding was sufficient to be able to read it with any degree of confidence. Layard tried to interest Canning in an excavation at Nimrud and finally convinced him to support his plans to begin in the autumn of 1845—it would have been a personal triumph for him, as he later wrote his wife:

I am quite proud of my public spirit in the cause of antiquity and fine art. But I must not ruin either you or the children; and I propose to call in the aid of the Government—whether Whig or Tory—to accomplish what mayeasily prove beyond my reach. Now you must be tired, dead tired of all this, and perhaps you think me crazy for caring so much about such trifles, but they are trifles for which colleges universities and nations would take each other by the cars, and as Major Rawlinson tells me, the inscriptions are likely to throw much light upon Scripture history, particularly on our old friend Tiglath-Pileser.

Nimrud

Layard returned to Mosul in October 1845 with £150 in expense money and a set of instructions from Canning, who clearly considered Layard to simply be his agent:

I rely upon Mr Layard’s obliging attention to the following points:

• To keep me informed of his operations, and of any objects of sufficient interest and curiosity which he may see or discover.
• To keep clear of political and religious questions, and as much as possible of Missionaries, or native chiefs and tribes regarded with enmity or jealousy by the Turkish authorities.
• To cultivate the goodwill of the Pashas and others of the Sultan's functionaries by all becoming means.
• To bear in mind that his professed occupation will he that of a traveller, fond of antiquities, of picturesque scenery, and of the manners peculiar to Asia.
• Not to start on his return without a previous communication with me subsequent to his first inquiries and attempts at discovery.
• In case of success to give me early and exact information as to the nature of the objects discovered, & the best means of removal etc with an estimate of cost, doing what he can to obtain the necessary help on the spot.
  

He was met by an English merchant named Henry Ross and the Vice-Consul Christian Rassam—he would need to rely on their help as he had no firman (official permission from the Ottoman government) to dig. The three of them were very surreptitious in their moves—Rassam used the construction of a house as a pretext to acquire tools and Ross went on a “hunting trip” to Nimrud while Layard followed with the tools on a kelek. They based themselves at the nearby village of Naifa, which they found almost deserted due to the depredations of the Pasha's soldiers and tax-collectors. They were well-received by the local sheikh and his family and, when they explained their intentions, the he agreed to collect some workmen from one of the neighbouring villages. Layard was filled with excitement at the prospect before him:

Visions of palaces underground, of gigantic monsters, of sculptured figures, and endless inscriptions, floated before me. After forming plan after plan for removing the earth, and extricating these treasures, I fancied myself wandering in a maze of chambers from which I could find no outlet. Then again, all was reburied, and I was standing on the grass-covered mound. Exhausted, I was at length sinking into sleep, when hearing the voice of Awad, I rose from my carpet, and joined him outside the hovel. The day already dawned; he had returned with six Arabs, who agreed for a small sum to work under my direction.
(Layard I 1849, vol. I: 25)

The layout of the site is trapezoidal covering some 357 hectares enclosed by 8 km of walls—the Acropolis lies in the southwest corner and covers approx 24 hectares. The Acropolis was what the Arabs called a tell, an artificial mound made up of the superimposed remains of hundreds, if not thousands, of years of occupation. In the southeast corner was an area now known as Fort Shalmaneser, which served as a barracks and as the arsenal. Layard believed that it was the site of Nineveh itself at first but he was wrong. When decipherment reached the point where he was able to read the inscriptions it turned out to be the city of Kalhu, known as Calah in the Old Testament and said to have been founded by Nimrod, the mighty hunter.

The first thing Layard and his companions did was to survey the upper surface of the Acropolis, the most promising area to dig, where they found pieces of broken alabaster carved with reliefs. Eventually, while unsuccessfully trying to extract a particularly large block in the north-western part of the site, they uncovered a room, with an inscription running around the walls. Also, since it appeared that the alabaster fragments were particularly concentrated in the southwest corner of the tell, Layard decided to do some probing there and managed to find another room. So, on his first day he managed to locate and begin excavations at two of the major palaces at the site. His excitement was tempered by the fact that the slabs had been badly damaged by fire—those in the south-western area actually crumbled to bits when they were exposed to the air. The same sort of fire damage was found by Botta at Khorsabad and was undoubtedly due to the destruction of Assyria at the end of the 7th century BC as described in the Old Testament.

After a week, Layard returned to Mosul to confront the pasha, Mohammed Keritli Oglu, who had gotten wind of his activities. Pasha Mohammed was a one-eyed, one-eared brute of a man who, when on his way to take up his position in Mosul, reintroduced the dish parassi, a tax on the villages where he stayed to compensate him for the wear on his teeth caused by having to eat their humble food. When he arrived in Mosul, he seduced the community leaders with promises of fair play and then had them all beheaded. His favourite trick was to spread word of his own demise and then confiscate the property of those who seemed unduly happy. However, the main obstacle to Layard’s plans was not the pasha but the qadi, the religious leader of the town, who resented the growth of European influence in his community—he had already incited a mob to destroy the British consulate.

By now, Layard had expanded his workforce from 6 to 30 men—mainly Nestorian Christians who had fled to this region to escape the Kurds in their Zagros homeland and were desperate for employment. Into the second week of excavation, they came upon their first complete slab bearing carved reliefs:

The Arabs were no less excited than myself by the discovery; and notwithstanding a violent shower of rain, working until dark, they completely exposed to view two slabs. On each slab were two has-reliefs, separated from one another by a band of inscriptions. The subject on the upper part of No. 1. was a battle scene. Two chariots, drawn by horses richly caparisoned, were each occupied by a group of three warriors; the principal person in both groups was beardless and evidently a eunuch. He was clothed in a complete suit of mail, and wore a pointed helmet on his head, from the sides of which fell lappets covering the ears, the lower part of the face, and the neck. The left hand, the arm being extended, grasped a how at full stretch; whilst the right, drawing the string to the ear, held an arrow ready to he discharged. A second warrior urged, with the reins and whip, to the utmost of their speed three horses, which were galloping over the plain. A third, without helmet, and with flowing hair and beard, held a shield for the defence of the principal figure. Under the horses' feet, and scattered about the relief, were the conquered, wounded by the arrows of the conquerors.

The other relief was similarly decorated and was found upside down and Layard concluded that it and its companion were brought from elsewhere to be re-carved. He was right on that score—the building, as we now know, was begun by Esarhaddon (680-669 BC) but never seems to have been completed—other reliefs were found facing the wall.

That evening the leader of the local militia, a man named Daoud Agha, arrived with orders from the Pasha to stop the dig—apparently the qadi had pointed out to the latter that the site was Muslim cemetery. He wrote Canning, urging him to apply for a proper firman so that he would not be further harassed but Canning prevaricated. Meanwhile, he continued to work in secret while Daoud turned a blind eye—he was mortally offended by the fact that the Pasha had ordered his men to remove tombstones from other cemeteries to set up on the tell. Eventually, Mohammed Keritli Oglu was deposed by the Sultan and a new, more moderate Pasha, Ismail, was appointed in his place and the situation eased somewhat.

Layard had arrived with funds from Canning for two months work and now these were beginning to run out. The new Pasha was sympathetic to Layard but, since the qadi was organizing a campaign directed against the excavations, he thought it would be best if Layard called a temporary halt to his activities. In the event, Layard reduced the level of activity but did not stop work altogether. He left a skeleton crew behind to continue limited operations while he went off to visit some of the local Bedouin tribes, especially the Abu Salman tribe who lived in the vicinity. He was particularly impressed with their sheikh, Abd-ur-rahman:

He was one of the handsomest Arabs I ever saw; tall, robust, and well-made, with a countenance in which intelligence was no less marked than courage and resolution. On his head he wore a turban of dark linen, from under which a many-coloured handkerchief fell over his shoulders; his dress was a simple white shirt, descending to the ankles, and an Arab cloak thrown loosely over it. Unlike Arabs in general, he had shaved his beard; and although he could scarcely be much beyond forty, I observed that the little hair which could he distinguished from under his turban was grey. He received me with every demonstration of hospitality, and led me to the upper place, divided by a goat-hair curtain from the harem. The tent was capacious; half was appropriated for the women, the rest formed the place of reception, and was at the same time occupied by two favourite mares and a colt. A few camels were kneeling on the grass around, and the horses of the strangers were tied by the halter to the tent-pins. From the carpets and cushions, which were spread for me, stretched on both sides a long line of men of the most motley appearance, seated on the hare ground. The Sheikh himself, as is the custom in some of the tribes, to show his respect for the guest, placed himself at the furthest end; and could only he prevailed upon, after many excuses and protestations, to share the carpet with me. In the centre of the group, near a small fire of camel's dung, crouched a half-naked Arab, engaged alternately in blowing up the expiring embers, and in pounding the roasted coffee in a copper mortar, ready to replenish the huge pots which stood near him.
(Layard 1849, vol. I: 56-7)

At about this time he received word that the French had applied for a firman to excavate at Küyünjik and wrote to Canning, stating that it would be a blow to national pride if this were allowed to happen.

Operations at Nimrud, meanwhile, had shifted to the north-western part of the mound where their work was soon rewarded by the discovery of a large head. Although partly buried it was clear that it belonged to one of the large winged bull or lion figures that guarded the more important doorways and gates of the palace. His workmen were dismayed and extremely agitated by the appearance of the monster, which they took for a jinn: I was not surprised that the Arabs had been amazed and terrified at this apparition. It required no stretch of imagination to conjure up the most strange fancies. This gigantic head, blanched with age, thus rising from the bowels of the earth, might well have belonged to one of those fearful beings which are pictured in the traditions of the country, as appearing to mortals slowly ascending from the regions below.

But Abd-ur-rahman convinced them that it was an antediluvian idol and had been one of, “those infidel giants of whom the Prophet—peace be with him!—has said that they were higher than the tallest date tree; this is one of the idols which Noah—peace be with him!—cursed before the flood!”

He immediately wrote Canning of the momentous discovery and urging him once again to act on the matter of a firman and more funding-pointing out the enormous public relations coup it would be. More immediate problems were at hand, for one of the workers had been terrified and had run all the way to Mosul to announce that the ancient giant Nimrod had returned:

He had scarcely checked his speed before reaching the bridge. Entering breathless into the bazaars, he announced to every one he met that Nimrod had appeared. The news soon got to the cars of the Cadi, who, anxious for a fresh opportunity to annoy me, called the Mufti and the Ulema together, to consult upon this unexpected occurrence. Their deliberations ended in a procession to the Governor, and a formal protest, on the part of the Mussulmans of the town, against proceedings so directly contrary to the laws of the Koran. The Cadi had no distinct idea whether the bones of the mighty hunter had been uncovered, or only his image; nor did Ismail Pasha very clearly remember whether Nimrod was a true-believing prophet, or an Infidel. I consequently received a somewhat unintelligible message from his Excellency, to the effect that the remains should he treated with respect, and be by no means further disturbed; that he wished the excavations to he stopped at once, and desired to confer with me on the subject.
(Layard 1849, vol. I: 67-8)

Excavations were suspended forthwith but Layard won a good deal of local support by throwing a huge party at the site and inviting all of the local Arabs together with the Christians of Mosul to attend. He borrowed some white pavilions from the Pasha and hired troupes of Kurdish musicians and entertainers—jugglers, sword-dancers and clowns—the party lasted until dawn. Abd-ur-rahman was utterly smitten by one of the guests, the French Consul's wife:

“Wallah”, he whispered to me, “she is the sister of the sun! What would you have more beautiful than that? Had I a thousand purses, I would give them all for such a wife. See!—her eyes are like the eyes of my mare, her hair is bitumen, and her complexion resembles the finest Busrah dates. Anyone would die for a houri like that.”

Layard's financial problems continued and he could not seem to motivate Canning to act although he used every argument he could think of—culture, history, national pride, etc—and was fully supported by Rawlinson. As it happened, Canning was in the midst of trying to transfer responsibility to the government and had already written to the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel, in glowing terms:

On the banks of the Tigris not far from Mosil there is a gigantic mound called Nimroud. My agent has succeeded in opening it here and there, and his labours have been rewarded by the discovery of many interesting sculptures, and a world of inscriptions. If the excavation keeps its promise to the end there is much reason to hope that Montagu House [the British Museum] will beat the Louvre hollow.

In the end, the long awaited firman arrived in the form of a letter from the Grand Vizier to the Pasha informing him of Layard's activities and granting the latter permission to continue his excavations and to send the discoveries back to England. The terms were generous and Layard used them to open up some trenches on Küyünjik—over the strenuous objections of the new French Vice-Consul who felt that Botta's activities there had given his country a prior claim.

Layard's troubles with French officialdom were insignificant, however, compared to the brouhaha he incited within the local community. One evening, while returning to Mosul from Küyünjik on the ferry, he had a run in with the qadi who had been praying with a group of holy men at the tomb of Jonah. Insults led to blows and Layard cracked open the head of the qadi with his stick. Only the presence of a pair of soldiers prevented his death at the hands of the cleric's followers. Needless to say, the incident sparked bitter anti-European feelings in the town and Layard had to take refuge in the Pasha's palace. Thanks to the latter's support, the eventually blew over and Layard was able to resume work.

By now it was the hottest part of the summer and Layard decided to take an extended trip into the mountains northeast of Mosul from whence many of his Nestorian workmen had come. The Nestorians were a Christian sect, deemed heretical in the West, that had been long settled in the region. Within a few years their community would be all but wiped out by the Kurds (of whom Layard had little good to say). A similar fate would befall another group Layard encountered—the Yezidis. Layard was warmly welcomed by these people and given the great honour of visiting the tomb of Sheikh Adi, the great 12th century mystic who was revered by the Yezidis as their greatest saint. It was located in a former Christian monastery north of Mosul and was the scene of a great annual pilgrimage.

Little is known about their practices—Layard was one of the few outsiders who actually saw their rituals—and nothing about their origins. The Yezidi religion combines features of Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism, Judaism, Nestorian Christianity, and Islam. They believed that they were created separately from the rest of mankind and consequently kept themselves strictly segregated from their neighbours. The focus of their worship is Satan who, as the “Peacock Angel”, rules the universe with six other angels. All seven are subordinate to God but the Yezidis believe that the latter has taken no interest in the universe since the Creation. They deny the existence of evil and therefore reject the notion of sin and of damnation. They have a reputation as devil-worshipers but this is based on misunderstanding. They believe that Satan repented of his sin of pride before God, was pardoned and made chief of the angels once again.

They had suffered badly under the recent crop of pashas and were naturally very suspicious of Turkish authority. Layard witnessed a campaign in which the Turks captured the main Yezidi settlement and executed the old people who had been left to defend it. The rest of the inhabitants were barricaded in a gully and defended themselves ferociously. The Pasha's troops attacked their position several times but were driven off with heavy losses.

When he returned to Mosul he found a letter from the British Museum appointing him their agent an providing him with some funds, amounting to about £1000. This was a wholly inadequate amount for the job at hand and Layard was deeply offended by their stinginess. He also received a lengthy document from the Trustees, detailing his responsibilities and informing him that he could be promised no further employment once his work in Iraq was finished. It did not improve his mood.

More Discoveries

Layard finally resumed work at Nimrud on November 1st, 1846—concentrating his efforts in the northwest and central parts of the site, where he had already located parts of palaces. He was unable to identify the names of the builders from their inscriptions and had to awkwardly refer to “the Khorsabad king” or “the son of the builder of the North-west Palace”. In the Central Building he found stacks of reliefs leaning up against the walls, waiting to be transported elsewhere. In the central part of the site, they recovered a polished basalt stele known as the Black Obelisk. It was just over 2 metres tall with a stepped top and was sculpted on all four sides with 20 small relief panels-mainly depicting foreign princes bringing their tribute to the king:

It appears to have been erected to celebrate the conquest of some remote country, for amongst the animals represented as brought to the king are the elephant, rhinoceros, lion, Bactrian camel, wild mule, ibex, stag, several species of baboon and monkey etc.-you will observe that the bas reliefs are in many instances repetitions of the larger sculptures in the earlier building of Nimroud, with which it was contemporary. He could not know that one of the figures shown grovelling before the king was Jehu of Israel—the problem, of course, lay in the inability to read the inscription, in this case a rather lengthy one.

By this time, he and Rawlinson could establish a sequence of royal names but were unable to read so much as one of them. Layard was familiar enough with the formulae to be able to work out a rough sequence of construction—for instance he knew that the king who built the Central Palace was the son of the builder of the Northwest Palace. He had noted that his sequence was supported somewhat by the sculptures which seemed to belong to distinct stylistic phases.

By April of 1847, in the Northwest Palace alone, he had explored 28 halls and chambers, lined with reliefs, along with 13 pairs of winged bulls or lions. Now it was time to suspend operations and Layard began to organize the shipment of the pick of his finds down the Tigris to Baghdad and thence to Basra and England. He needed to find a lot of rope and mats, to secure and protect the reliefs, and these had to be imported from Syria. When a consignment was stolen by Bedouin tribesmen, Layard rode out to their camp with a couple of Turkish constables to confront the culprits and, noticing the sheikh’s tent had new ropes, addressed him:

Peace he with you. Your health and spirits are, please God, good. We have long been friends, although it has never yet been my good fortune to see you. I know the laws of friendship; that which is my property is your property, and the contrary. But there are a few things, such as mats, felts, and ropes, which come from afar, and are very necessary to me, whilst they can he of little use to you; otherwise God forbid that I should ask for them. You will greatly oblige me by giving these things to me.

When the sheikh denied he had these things, Layard slapped handcuffs on him and dragged him away from the tent. The following day, his fellow tribesmen produced Layard's goods.

In March he had begun the removal of the bulls:

The men being ready, and all my preparations complete, I stationed myself on top of the high bank of earth over the second bull, and ordered the wedges to he struck out from under the sculpture to he moved. Still, however, it remained firmly in its place. A rope having been passed around it, six or seven men easily tilted it over. The thick, ill-made cable stretched with the strain, and almost buried itself in the earth round which it was coiled. The ropes held well. The mass descended gradually, the Chaldaeans propping it up with the beams. It was a moment of great anxiety. The drums and shrill pipes of the Kurdish musicians increased the din and confusion caused by the war-cry of the Arabs, who were half frantic with excitement. They had thrown off nearly all their garments; their long hair floated in the wind; and they indulged in the wildest postures and gesticulations as they clung to the ropes. The women had congregated on the sides of the trenches, and by their incessant screams, and by the ear-piercing tahlehl, added to the enthusiasm of the men.

The bull once in motion, it was no longer possible to obtain a bearing. The loudest cries could produce were lost in the crash of discordant sounds. Neither the hippopotamus-hide whips of the Cawasses, nor the bricks and clods of earth with which I endeavoured to draw attention from some of the most noisy of the group, were of any avail. Away went the bull, steady enough as long as supported by the props behind; but as it came nearer to the rollers. The beams could no longer he used. The cable and ropes stretched more and more. Dry from the climate, as they felt the strain, they creaked and threw out dust. Water was thrown over them, but in vain, for they all broke together when the sculpture was within four or five feet of the rollers. The bull was precipitated to the ground. Those who held the ropes' thus suddenly released, followed its example, and were rolling, one over the other, in the dust. A sudden silence succeeded to the clamour. I rushed into the trenches, prepared to find the bull in many pieces. It would be difficult to describe my satisfaction when I saw it lying precisely where I had wished to place it and uninjured! The Arabs no sooner got on their legs again, than, seeing the result of the accident, they darted out of the trenches, and, seizing by the hands the women who were looking on, formed a large circle, and, yelling their war-cry with redoubled energy, commenced a most mad dance. The musicians exerted themselves to the utmost; but their music was drowned by the cries of the dancers. Even Abd-ur-rahman shared in the excitement and, throwing his cloak to one of his attendants, insisted upon leading off the dehkhé.

Once removed from the site, they were transported by the same methods Botta had used—Layard even used some of Botta's original ox-carts. They were then loaded onto rafts and floated down the Tigris to Baghdad (below).

He had a little time and money left and so he used them to do some preliminary work at Qal’at Shergat (ancient Aššur) and revealed much of the Southwest Palace at Küyünjik. The latter, he believed (quite rightly as it turned out) must belong to one of the kings mentioned in the Old Testament-Sennacherib, Esarhaddon or Tiglath-Pileser. He left Mosul in June of 1847 after bidding a tearful farewell to his workers and their families, taking with him a young friend, Hormuzd Rassam, the younger brother of Christian Rassam, the Vice-Consul.

Layard's Triumph

Layard's return to Europe was somewhat overshadowed by the Revolutions which broke out throughout Europe in 1848. He was informed of a pending offer of a permanent post with the Foreign Office and instructed to wait in Istanbul where he cooled his heels for a while, waiting for Canning, but he came down with malaria and steamed for Italy that autumn, where he visited old friends and toured the ruins of Pompeii before heading to Paris. Botta greeted him with open arms and he was invited to address the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres where he was very warmly received and congratulated on his work. As for Botta himself, he had fully expected to be back in Mosul as French Consul by now but political developments in France prevented this. As it happened, within a few months King Louis-Philippe was a refugee and there was a Republic once again in France and Botta was banished to a minor post at Jerusalem—the two men never met again.

Pressing on to London, Layard arrived at his uncle's house on Montague Square in December 1847 and soon made contact with his employers at the British Museum. The first consignments from Nimrud had already arrived and the objects were on display—although there were crates still on the quayside at Basra. For the time being, he needed to rest and recover from the exhaustion and recurrent bouts of malaria, which had greatly weakened him. The Foreign Office had at last found a position for him—as member of an international boundary commission to settle the frontier between Turkey and Persia. He was not exactly keen to head back to the Near East so soon after his arrival home—he was enjoying his new-found fame and the round of dinners and parties it brought. Arrangements were made to publish his drawings and copies of the texts along with a popular account of his excavations but the Museum was not keen to provide funds for further excavations. Layard wanted £4000-5000 for the first year alone—totally unrealistic under the circumstances.

The 1840's were a tumultuous time-the effects of the industrial revolution on society were abundantly apparent to writers like Disraeli and Dickens (Marx and Engels were working on the Communist Manifesto). Ireland had just gone through the Potato Famine and the Chartist Movement was agitating for political reform in Britain. On the Continent, the February Revolution in Paris was followed by similar outbreaks throughout Europe, in Germany, Italy and the Hapsburg dominions (Hungary). The government had more pressing matters to consider—and more urgent demands on its budget—than archaeological expeditions to the Middle East.

The cousins became very close and it is strongly suspected that they may have been in love if not actually lovers—Layard was always discreet in his dealings with ladies, whether in England or in Middle East. She was supervising a substantial rebuilding of her home at Canford Manor and Layard gave her some reliefs to help with the decoration—one was recently rediscovered in a public school, covered with a thick coat of plaster. She gave him great encouragement and pressed him to complete his account of his discoveries and, when that was done, persuaded John Murray to publish a scholarly edition of his drawings. Nineveh and Its Remains came out in 1849 and The Monuments of Nineveh a year later.

Layard spent most of 1848 working on his popular account, living with his mother in Cheltenham. He resigned his place on the Boundary Commission in September of that year. At about the same time, the boxes containing the bulk of his excavated material finally arrived in London—having already been displayed in Bombay where they had spent several months awaiting shipment. But when he unpacked them he found that they had been carelessly packed and most of them had been broken. The documentation, showing their provenance was all mixed up and many of the smaller objects had entirely disappeared.

In December, he decided to head back to Istanbul to take up his duties as a member of Canning's embassy staff-a situation which neither man viewed with much relish but early in 1849 Nineveh and its Remains was published and became an instant best-seller. Praise rained down on Layard from all quarters-the president of the Royal Asiatic Society call the book 'the greatest achievement of our time' and even Uncle Benjamin was impressed. Interest in renewed excavations in Iraq, at Küyünjik in particular, was strong and the Museum agreed to finance at least two more seasons (but for the niggardly sum of £3000 in total). This time he was to have an artist, F. C. Cooper, and the services of an assistant, Hormuzd Rassam as well as a doctor, Humphrey Sandwith. However, one thing that was a matter of considerable concern to Layard was the lack of a new firman from the Turkish authorities. For political reasons, Canning was reluctant to pursue the matter.

Excavations at Nineveh

Soon after his arrival in Mosul, he took a tour of Küyünjik across the river where his friend Henry Ross had been conducting small operations over the past couple of years. The site of ancient Nineveh lies just across the Tigris, at the point where the Khosr River flows into it. The ruined line of its walls could still be discerned, enclosing a trapezoidal area containing two substantial mounds:

1. Küyünjik, the main Acropolis, is an oval (ca. 950 x 500 metres) roughly 30 metres high
2. Nebi Yunus (“the Tomb of Jonah”) is smaller and presumed to have been the Arsenal

Botta had conducted soundings Küyünjik in 1842 but in areas that were badly disturbed and unproductive. So the following spring he abandoned all activity there and transferred his attentions to Khorsabad about 20 kilometres to the north. Layard had began excavating on the site in 1847, just before his return to England, and work had continued in his absence under the direction of Henry Ross and Christian Rassam.

The depth of deposit at the site meant that the practice of excavating by means of open trenches was impractical and Rassam's man on the spot, Fat Toma, devised a new technique to get the remains. His method was simple—he would have his workers sink a shaft in a likely area and then tunnel along laterally (right) until they ran into a wall. Then it was a simple matter of following the wall through doorways, from room to room until the whole complex was revealed. Unfortunately, like most buildings in Mesopotamia, Assyrian palaces were largely made out of sun-dried mudbrick—a material which is very difficult for the untrained eye to recognize—and the workmen bored right through many walls without even realizing they had done so. It also meant that the centre of the room was unexcavated. The remains discovered so far were in the south-western part of the mound and formed part of another palace complex—Layard speculated that it may have belonged to Sennacherib (correctly, as it turned out).

When he visited the site, Layard saw rooms of newly uncovered reliefs and was struck by how different they appeared to those he had found at Nimrud—more like the examples from Khorsabad. The sculptors covered the entire slab with carvings, rather than dividing it into two registers, and there was much more attention to background detail as well as an attempt to convey a sort of perspective. Layard got the impression that the reliefs in a particular room were intended to convey a single story—generally a military campaign. Great care was taken to show the local terrain-the mountains of western Iran; the marshes of southern Mesopotamia; and the orchards and vineyards of the Levant—so that the viewer could easily identify the country involved.

The sculptors covered the entire slab with carvings, rather than dividing it into two registers, and there was much more attention to background detail as well as an attempt to convey a sort of perspective. Layard got the impression that the reliefs in a particular room were intended to convey a single story-generally a military campaign. Great care was taken to show the local terrain—the mountains of western Iran; the marshes of southern Mesopotamia; and the orchards and vineyards of the Levant—so that the viewer could easily identify the country involved. As was the case at Nimrud and Khorsabad, they were badly damaged by fire making them very brittle and, in many cases, only the lower portion survived. This made it impossible to move them so they were left in situ and then the room was backfilled. In most cases, the drawings made by Layard or Cooper are the only record we have of them.

Of particular interest were the scenes found in one of the courtyards showing the quarrying and transportation of one of the colossal winged bull figures which guarded many of the doorways in the palace. They were apparently roughed out at the quarry and then dragged down to the river on sledges where they were loaded onto keleks and floated to the site of the palace. Here they received their final dressing before being dragged into their final position. The methods were virtually identical to those used by Botta and Layard when they removed them and shipped them back to Europe.

He organized a dozen or so teams of workers-—about one hundred men altogether—to extend the excavations of the South West Palace at Küyünjik while he and Hormuzd Rassam went to Nimrud to plan a resumption of activity. Layard’s plan was to uncover more of the North West Palace and to explore the area around the “Pyramidal Mound” to the north. While surveying the site he came across none other than Henry Rawlinson, asleep at the bottom of one of the old trenches, wrapped in a rug. It was not a very happy meeting—Rawlinson was sick with the fever and clearly exhausted. He was not particularly interested in the architecture and was somewhat condescending about the art—all he seemed to be interested in were the texts. But thanks to his own efforts and those of an Irish parson named Edward Hinkes, it was now possible to read some of the simpler inscriptions with some confidence making it possible to determine which king built the various structures and the order in which they reigned.

Layard spent most of the following months travelling back and forth from one site to the other, supervising operations at both. At Nineveh, he located an imposing doorway flanked by a monumental façade, with enormous winged bulls and ‘Gilgamesh’ figures, similar to one found by Botta at Khorsabad. This was the entrance to the Throne Room, located on the western side of a large courtyard. At Nimrud, meanwhile, he was dealing with the mass of material, including metalwork, glass vessels and ivory furniture, that had emerged from a well in the southern part of the North West Palace. The ‘pyramid’ turned out to be a type of stepped tower known as a ziggurat. Digging straight into it, he uncovered a long, low gallery (30 x 2 metres) which had evidently been broken into some time in the past, presumably by robbers. Its contents and function remain a mystery.

He found himself under a good deal of strain during this period. Money was running low and he became embroiled in an ongoing feud with some of the directors of the British Museum, his sponsors. He had powerful friends in England who were campaigning through the newspapers for increased funds to be made available to him. Of course the Museum found this all profoundly embarrassing and blamed Layard. There were also problems locally where his relationship with one of his guests scandalized some members of the European community. Captain Stewart Rolland and his wife Charlotte were travelling through the Iraq and stayed with Layard for a time. Captain Rolland was utterly charmed by his host and very supportive of his efforts but was much more interested in hunting than archaeology. Charlotte, on the other hand, was very keen on the subject and through herself enthusiastically into the work at Küyünjik. She was a real beauty, always a plus with Layard, and the two of them had a free and easy relationship that met with strong disapproval from the missionary community.

His work was also hampered by the unsettled state of affairs in the region where Bedouin tribes were allowed to raid virtually unhindered. Layard witnessed such a raid at the village near Nimrud:

One morning, I was suddenly disturbed by the reports of firearms, mingled with the shouts of men and the shrieks of women. Issuing, immediately from the house, I found the open space behind it a scene of wild excitement and confusion. Horsemen, galloping in all directions and singing their war song, were driving before them with their long spears the cattle and sheep of the inhabitants of the village. The men were firing at the invaders; the women, armed with tent poles and pitchforks, and filling the air with their shrill screams, were trying to rescue the animals. The horsemen of the Arab tribe of Tai had taken advantage of a thick mist hanging over the Jaif, to cross the Zab early in the morning, and to fall upon us before we were aware of their approach. No time was to be lost to prevent bloodshed, and all its disagreeable consequences. A horse was soon ready, and I rode towards the one who appeared to be the chief of the attacking party. Although his features were concealed by the keffieh closely drawn over the lower part of his flee, after the Bedouin fashion in war, he had been recognised as Saleh, the brother of the Howar, the Sheikh of the Tai. He saluted me as 1 drew near, and we rode along side by side, whilst his followers were driving before them the cattle of the villagers. Directing Hormuzd to keep back the Shemutti, I asked the chief to restore the plundered property. Fortunately, hitherto only one man of the attacking party had been seriously wounded. The expedition was chiefly directed against the Jebours, who some days before had carried off a large number of the camels of the Tai. I promised to do my best to recover them. At length Saleh, for my sake, as he said, consented to restore all that had been taken, and the inhabitants of Nimroud were called upon to claim each his own property. As we approached the ruins, for the discussion had been carried on as we rode from the village, my Jebour workmen, who had by this time heard of the affray, were preparing to meet the enemy. Some had ascended to the top of the high conical mound, where they had collected stones and bricks ready to hurl against the Tai should they attempt to follow them. Thus probably assembled on this very mound, which Xenophon calls a pyramid, the people of Larissa when the ten thousand Greeks approached their ruined city. Others advanced towards us, stripped to their waists, brandishing their swords and short spears in defiance, and shouting their war cry. It was with difficulty that, with the assistance of Hormuzd, I was able to check this display of valour, and prevent them from renewing the engagement. The men and women of the village were still following the retreating horsemen, clamouring for various articles, such as cloaks and handkerchiefs, not yet restored. In the midst of the crowd of wranglers, a hare suddenly sprang from her form and darted over the plain. My greyhound, who had followed me from the house, immediately pursued her. This was too much for the Arabs; their love of the chase overcame even their propensity for appropriating other people's property; cattle, cloaks, swords, and keffiehs were abandoned to their respective claimants, and the whole band of marauders joined wildly in the pursuit. Before we had reached the game we were far distant from Nimroud. I seized the opportunity to conclude the truce, and Saleh with his followers rode slowly back towards the ford of the Zab to seek his brother's tents. I promised to visit the Howar in two or three days, and we parted with mutual assurances of friendship

An Expedition to the Khabur

Travelling across the Jebel Sinjar, Layard's caravan passed through a landscape dominated by the ruined mounds of ancient tells:

As the evening crept on, I watched from the highest mound the sun as it gradually sank in unclouded splendour below the sea-like expanse before me. On all sides, as far as the eye could reach, rose the grass-covered heaps marking the site of ancient habitations. The great tide of civilisation had long since ebbed, leaving, these scattered wrecks on the solitary shore. Are those waters to flow again, bearing back the seeds of knowledge and of wealth that they have wafted to the West ? We wanderers were seeking what they had left behind, as children gather up the coloured shells on the deserted sands. At my feet there was a busy. scene, making more lonely the unbroken solitude which reigned in the vast plain around, where the only thing having life or motion were the shadows of the lofty mounds as they lengthened before the declining sun. Above three years before when, watching the approach of night from the old castle of Tel Afar, I had counted nearly one hundred ruins, now, when in the midst of them, no less than double that number were seen from Tel Jemal.

The Khabur region was just as unsettled as the rest of Iraq—tribal feuds were endemic and attacks on caravans were quite common. Layard’s group ran into a band of Bedouins who had just plundered a Turkish government caravan:

We crossed, daring the following evening, a beautiful plain covered with sweet smelling flowers and aromatic herbs, and abounding in gazelles, hares, and bustards. We reached in about two hours the encampments, whose smoke we had seen during the preceding evening. They belonged to Bedouins of the Hamoud branch of the Shammar. The tents were pitched closely together in groups, as if the owners feared danger. We alighted at some, distance from them to avoid entering them as guests. The chiefs soon came out to us, bringing camels' milk and bread. From them we learnt that they had lately plundered, on the high road between Mosul and Mardin, a caravan conveying, amongst other valuable loads, a large amount of government treasure. The Turkish authorities had called upon Ferhan, as responsible chief of the Shammar, to restore the money, threatening, in case of refusal, an expedition against the whole tribe. The Hamoud, unwilling to part with their booty, and fearing lest the rest of the Shammar might compel them to do so in order to avoid a war, were now retreating towards the north, and, being strong in horsemen, had openly defied Ferhan. They had been joined by many families from the Assaiyah, who had crossed the Euphrates, and united with the Aneyza on account of a blood feud with the Nejm. The Hamoud are notorious for treachery and cruelty, and certainly the looks of those who gathered round us, many of them grotesquely attired in the plundered garments of the slaughtered Turkish soldiery, did not belie their reputation. They fingered every article of dress we had on, to learn its texture and value.

When he arrived at Arban, where the bulls were found, he was greeted by the sheikh, Mohammed Emin,

The tents of the chief were pitched under the ruins of Arban, and on the right or northern bank of the river, which was not at this time fordable. As we drew near to them, after a ride of nearly two hours, Mohammed Emin pointed in triumph to the sculptures, which were the principal objects of my visit. They stood a little above the water's edge, at the base of a mound of considerable size. We had passed several tells and the double banks of ancient canals, showing that we were still amidst the remains of ancient civilisation.

The ancient site was cut by the river and the bulls had been partially exposed as the result of a landslide and so excavating them was going to be tricky. They were smaller and, to Layard, seemed cruder than those found at the major palaces. The inscription on them said that they belonged to the “palace of so-and-so” but the name was unfamiliar.

We now know that they were set up by the local governor, a man named Mušezib-Ninurta, in about 800 BC. Layard’s workers found no walls in association with them nor with another pair found in the course of their excavations. Of course there were walls but, because they were made of mud-brick and had not been lined with stone slabs like those at Nineveh and Nimrud, they went unrecognized. In all, Layard was somewhat disappointed and gave up on further excavations.

When they returned to Mosul, it was evident that Layard's relationships with some of the Europeans were becoming strained. This was particularly so with Captain Rolland who clearly was jealous of the relationship between Layard and his wife. Layard described Rolland as, “one of the most selfish, ill-bred, unfeeling and conceited men I ever met” and it was clear that she was being abused, verbally if not physically. The captain’s mood swings were becoming increasingly violent and were having a profound effect on Charlotte. Layard's solution was to give her a room in his own house—perhaps not the most prudent move. Things reached a head when the party was returning to Mosul from Nimrud. Rolland became abusive and was particularly insulting to Layard, who chose not to respond. He then dragged his wife off to their tent.

A few moments afterwards I heard violent screams proceeding from his tent, which was left completely open on two sides. One of my servants running in at the same time cried out that Mr. Rolland had thrown his wife to the ground and was attempting to murder her. I had only one course to pursue and calling some people we separated them and secured him. He was in a most violent state-uttering abuse which I need not repeat and calling for his arms—because I had dared to interfere between him and his wife.

In the end, the captain was released and wrote a formal letter of apology absolving Layard of any impropriety. The Rollands were asked to leave and headed back to England.

While he had been in the Khabur country, work had continued around the ziggurat at Nimrud and two temple complexes to the east of it had been reached by tunnelling. The larger building had two entrances, one of them guarded by colossal human-headed winged lions while the other was formed of large relief blocks. A particularly fine, arched stela of the king stood to one side of the second doorway along with a small stone altar. The interior of the temple, which we now know was dedicated to the god Ninurta, was badly damaged by fire and produced little in the way of artefacts—although there was a large slab bearing a long inscription. The smaller temple, dedicated to Ištar-belit-mati (“Ištar, mistress of all lands”), was guarded by a pair of large naturalistic lions and contained a superb statue of the king who built the North West Palace, Aššur-nasirpal II.

All of this was reported to Layard by Matilda Rassam, wife of the British Consul, when he returned to Mosul. However, she also had to report torrential rains had flooded the whole area, right up to the base of the mound, and that one of the colossal lions had been broken when the pair of them were being loaded onto rafts for shipment. A week later, he received a letter from Captain Felix Jones, who commanded a steamship on the river, that one of the two rafts had been swept into an enormous swamp created by a breach in the Tigris bank. Fortunately, it was possible to manoeuvre the steamship into the swamp and transfer the cases of smaller reliefs and objects. Shifting the lion proved to be a very difficult proposition but, eventually, it was rescued too.

At Küyünjik too, the work was proceeding most satisfactorily and more rooms of the South West Palace had been uncovered, mainly through tunnelling. One long corridor was decorated with reliefs showing servants carrying platters of choice delicacies (including dried locusts) for some banquet al fresco. Another set of rooms, guarded by figures that appeared to be part man and part fish, contained over twenty thousand cuneiform documents-the archives of the palace.

They worked into the summer, although by July conditions had become unbearable, with temperatures often reaching 50° C. Cooper and Dr. Sandwith were both suffering from heat exhaustion and had to be sent into the hills to recover. Layard and Hormuzd Rassam each suffered recurrent bouts of malaria. So in July, Layard suspended operations and packed up the first shipment of sculptures from Küyünjik. Then the two of them caught up with Cooper and Sandwith and the whole party headed for Lake Van, high up in the mountains. Unfortunately, the condition of the doctor and the artist continued to worsen and they had to be sent to Constantinople.

While Layard was away, work progressed rapidly at Küyünjik and several more rooms had been uncovered, centred around a large courtyard. The reliefs in this part of the palace were predominantly military in theme, the ones in the courtyard depicting a campaign in Babylonia (the twin rivers and the date palms give away the locale). On the west side of the courtyard was a monumental doorway, guarded by a pair of winged bulls. The doorway led through a pair of broad antechambers to a small room at the back (XXXVI). Evidently it was a room of some importance since each doorway leading to it was flanked by a similar pair of bulls. The reliefs in this room depicted the siege and capture of a town in the Levant (the landscape depicts hills covered with vineyards). We now know that the town in question was Lachish, one of the garrison towns of the Kingdom of Judah whose capture by Sennacherib is described in terrifying detail in the Old Testament. The whole sequence of events, from the arrival of the Assyrian army to the deportation of the survivors is shown in a single tableau. The centrepiece of the composition, placed opposite the doorway, was the storming of the town. Under the covering fire of archers and slingers, the Assyrian heavy infantry are shown advancing up a siege ramp, pushing battering rams up to the town walls. The defenders, meanwhile, are frantically throwing bricks onto the heads of the attackers and trying to destroy their siege engines with torches. Recent excavations at the actual site of Lachish have confirmed many of the details of the composition, such as the ramp and the double walls. The reliefs now hold pride of place in the Assyrian collection of the British Museum.

Departure

By October, Layard stopped work at Nineveh and had organized another large shipment of objects for the British Museum. He had long since reached the decision that this would be his final season in Iraq and applied for permission to return home the following Spring in order to catalogue his finds and write a final report. In the meantime, he intended to travel south by raft to Babylonia where he could explore its ancient mounds in the cooler winter months. The countryside was crawling with bandits, however, and one of the rafts carrying Layard's finds had already been attacked. Layard himself travelled under the protection one of the local sheikhs and reached Baghdad with little incident.

Baghdad was a particularly dangerous place to be in the 1840's. Not twenty years had passed since the city had been utterly devastated by an outbreak of the plague. People had died in their tens of thousands-out of a total population of perhaps 150,000 or so. The situation was made infinitely worse when the Tigris burst its banks and flooded the city. By the time of Layard's second visit, its population had scarcely reached a third of its previous total. The countryside was swarming with bandits and it was very dangerous to be outside the walls. It wasn't much safer inside the walls. The sanitation system had completely broken down after years of neglect and epidemics were a regular occurrence. Under the circumstances, Layard stuck fairly close to the city until he reached some sort of understanding with the local authorities but in December he was able to start work at Hillah, the site of ancient Babylon. The results were less fruitful than he had hoped because of the overburden of Hellenistic remains and he decided it would be a waste of both time and money to continue. In January 1851, he tried his luck further south at the site of Nippur but was disappointed here too and eventually returned to Baghdad suffering from recurrent bouts of malaria and complete exhaustion.

Despite his condition and the fact that, after having spent the better part of a decade in the Near East, he had clearly lost his enthusiasm, Rawlinson and others tried to urge him to continue and had raised private funds for the purpose. But Layard was determined to return home and could not be swayed. He returned to Mosul where he handed over responsibility for continued excavation at Küyünjik to a young man named Bell who had come to replace Cooper as artist. He supervised the loading of the last consignment of cases and wrote his final account of the excavations for the British Museum. As he took one last tour through its rooms and corridors, he had every reason to be proud of himself:

Such were the discoveries in the ruined palace of Sennacherib at the time of my departure for Europe. In this magnificent edifice I had opened no less than seventy-one halls, chambers and passages, whose walls, almost without an exception, had been panelled with slabs of sculptured alabaster recording the wars, the triumphs, and the great deeds of the Assyrian king. By rough calculation, about 9880 feet, or nearly two miles, of reliefs, with twenty-seven portals, formed by colossal winced bull and lion-sphinxes, were uncovered in that part alone of the build explored during my researches. The greatest length of the excavations was about 720 feet the greatest breadth about 600 feet. The pavement of the chambers was from 20 to 35 feet below the surface of the mound.

A glance at the general plan will show that only part of the palace has been explored, and that much still remains underground of this enormous structure. Since my return to Europe other rooms and sculptures have been discovered. Both to the north and to the east of the ruins comprised in the plan, I had found traces of chambers, and the fragments of has-reliefs. The excavations having been carried to the very edge of the mound to the south and the west, nothing, of course, remains to be discovered on those sides. How far any of the unexplored part of the palace may still he preserved, it is of course impossible to conjecture.

Epilogue

Layard went on to have a long and colourful career, serving as an MP until 1869 and becoming a highly respected and effective politician-in 1861 he became Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs. In 1855 he had been one of the founders of the Ottoman Bank and became its chairman of the board—from then on, he was financially independent. He spent his holidays in Italy and where he enthusiastically pursued his passion for Italian art-he headed the Arundel Society dedicated to its protection and took a special interest in the fate of Venice. After the death of her husband in 1853, Charlotte Guest decided to marry the her son's teacher, a man 14 years younger than herself-Layard did not approve and there followed a rift between the two. After a few years, the pair seem to have patched things up but they fell out again in 1869 when the 55 year-old Layard proposed marriage to her 25 year-old daughter, Enid. He served as ambassador to Spain from 1869-77 and then as ambassador to Turkey, thus taking over the post that Canning had held all those years ago.

After his retirement in 1884, he moved to Venice where he and Enid shared a palazzo on the Grand Canal—he died there in 1894, after a brief illness. After his death, his wife presented his papers to the British Library—but was very careful to remove all of the correspondence between Layard and her mother.

© Odyssey, Adventures in Archaeology. 2003

Suggested Reading

Larson, M.T.	(1994)	The Conquest of Assyria
Layard, A. H.	(1849)	Nineveh and Its Remains
	(1849-53)	Monuments of Nineveh
	(1853)	Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon
	(1894)	Early Adventures in Persia, Susiana, and Babylonia
Waterfield, G,	(1963)	Layard of Nineveh