rst time an
equally considerable quantity of original material at the disposal of
scholars for the history of Assyria. All that could be transported was
sent to the Louvre, and this material was subsequently published. Botta
was followed by Austen Henry Layard, who, acting as the agent of the
British Museum, conducted excavations during the years 1845-52, first at
a mound Nimrud, some fifteen miles to the south of Khorsabad, and
afterwards on the site of Nineveh proper, the mound Koyunjik, opposite
Mosul, besides visiting and examining other mounds still further to the
south within the district of Babylonia proper.

The scope of Layard's excavations exceeded, therefore, those of Botta;
and to the one palace at Khorsabad, he added three at Nimrud and two at
Koyunjik, besides finding traces of a temple and other buildings. The
construction of these edifices was of the same order as the one
unearthed by Botta; and as at the latter, there was a large yield of
sculptures, inscriptions, and miscellaneous objects. A new feature,
however, of Layard's excavations was the finding of several rooms filled
with fragments of small and large clay tablets closely inscribed on both
sides in the cuneiform characters. These tablets, about 30,000 of which
found their way to the British Museum, proved to be the remains of a
royal library. Their contents ranged over all departments of
thought,--hymns, incantations, prayers, epics, history, legends,
mythology, mathematics, astronomy constituting some of the chief
divisions. In the corners of the palaces, the foundation records were
also found, containing in each case more or less extended annals of the
events that occurred during the reign of the monarch whose official
residence was thus brought to light. Through Layard, the foundations
were laid for the Assyrian and Babylonian collections of the British
Museum, the parts of which exhibited to the public now fill six large
halls. Fresh sources of a direct character were thus added for the
study, not only of the historical unfolding of the Assyrian empire, but
through the tablets of the royal library, for the religion of ancient
Mesopotamia as well.

The stimulus given by Botta and Layard to the recovery of the records
and monuments of antiquity that had been hidden from view for more than
two thousand years, led to a refreshing rivalry between England and
France in continuing a work that gave promise of still richer returns by
further effor