Austen Henry Layard

That scattering of fragments was compounded by the excavation of the library after its rediscovery in the 19th century.

English archeologist Austen Henry Layard was working with Hormuzd Rassam, who had been Layard's assistant before training at Oxford and becoming an assyriologist in his own right.

The two started excavating Nineveh in 1849 and found numerous clay tablets and fragments.

Rassam continued excavations after Layard moved on and found another huge collection of tablets.

On the discovery and decipherment of the cuneiform inscriptions, Oriental scholars hoped that copies of the Babylonian histories and traditions would one day be discovered, and we should thus gain earlier and more satisfactory evidence as to these primitive stories.

In the mound of Kuyunzik, opposite the town of Mosul, Mr. Layard discovered part of the Royal Assyrian Library, and further collections also forming part of its library have been subsequently found by Mr. H. Rassam, Mr. Loftus, and myself.

Sir Henry Rawlinson, who made the preliminary examination of Mr. Lyard's treasures and who was the first to recognize their value, estimated the number of these fragments of inscriptions at over 20,000.

The attention of decipherers was in the first instance drawn to the later historical inscriptions, particularly to those of the Assyrian kings contemporary with the Hebrew monarchy.

Or once more we might devote our attention to the precious relics of a still earlier period, like the Fondaco dei Turchi already mentioned, and the Donna and Saibante to right and left of the Traghetto of the Madonneta, all three of which date from the 12th century.

Nor will the English visitor fail to mark with interest the sunny and flower-bedecked front of Ca' Capello, the home of the fine collection of pictures made by the late Sir Henry Layard.

The churches, too, which flank the Canalazzo, though not numerous or imposing, have their interest.

Besides those already spoken of near the station, we pass one on either hand before reaching the Rialto, and each of these by its name typifies the gymnastic feats of which the Venetian dialect is capable.

The shells and tablets of stone were etched or graven, the figures or characters being cut in their surface and in some cases also stained with various colors.

It was by the ancient art of stamping that the walls, palaces, and towers of Babylon were covered with hieroglyphics, which have but recently been brought to light from under the immense mounds of Mesopotamia by Layard and other explorers.

The patriarch Job, who is supposed to have lived about two thousand three hundred years after the creation, exclaimed, Oh, that my words were now written! Oh, that they were printed in a book! That they were graven with an iron pen and hid in the rock forever! Stung with the unjust accusation of his friends, he desires to record his words that the generations following might see the justice of his cause.

The English translation has given the allusion to printing to the text, the original word signifying rather to engrave on a plate, which was doubtless the only printing known to Job.

This custom is said to have originated with Atossa, the daughter of Belocus.

Layard, in his Nineveh and Babylon, describing a marriage celebrated in recent times near Nimrud, said that the parties entered into the contract before witnesses amidst dancing and rejoicing.

On the next day, the bride, covered from head to foot by a thick veil, was led to the bridegroom's house, surrounded by her friends dressed in their gayest robes and accompanied by musicians.

She was kept behind a curtain in the corner of a darkened room for three days, during which time the guests feasted.

One remarkable instance of this may be cited.

Mr. Layard has identified the site of Larissa with the modern Nimrod.

Now, Xenophon relates that when Larissa was besieged by the Persians, an eclipse of the sun took place, so remarkable in its effects and therefore undoubtedly total, that the Median defenders of the town threw down their arms and the city was accordingly captured.

And Hansen has shown that a certain estimate of the moon's motion makes the eclipse which occurred on August 15th, 310 BC, not only total but central at Nimrod.

He says, All the names of the gods in Greece were brought from Egypt, an opinion in which Diodorus and other eminent authorities concur.

But it is the opinion of acute modern critics that we must go beyond Egyptian to Assyrian or Indian, perhaps even to Hebrew sources, for the origin of Greek mythology.

Layard has ascribed to Niebuhr the following significant remarks.

There is a want in Grecian art which neither I nor any man now alive can supply.

We'll follow the AI into the clay, into the wedge-shaped script, into the minds of people who live so long ago their cities are dust, but their words remain, pressed into clay, waiting.

and now finally we can hear them picture this it's eighteen forty nine and a young british adventurer named austin henry layard is standing in the blazing heat of northern iraq staring at a massive mound of earth that the locals call For centuries, maybe millennia, people had been walking past this hill without giving it much thought.

Just another bump in the landscape, another pile of wind-blown sand and clay.

But Laird suspected something different.