Cambridge Library Collection - Archaeology: Early Adventures in Persia, Susiana, and Babylonia - Volume 2 (Paperback)

Austen Henry Layard
Cambridge University Press
 9781108043434
1-108-04343-7

Sir Austen Henry Layard (1817-94) was one of the leading British archaeologists of the Victorian period. His excavations at Nimrud and Nineveh led to important discoveries about ancient Mesopotamia, particularly.

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about the Assyrian civilisation, and his popular books such as Nineveh and its Remains (1849) brought archaeology to a wide audience. This book, first published in 1887, tells the story of an 'adventurous journey' Layard had made over forty years earlier, in 1840-2. He learnt Arabic and Persian and travelled widely, even among tribal peoples notorious for their lawlessness. Volume 2 opens with Layard's account of attacks by the Persian military against his hosts, the mountain-dwelling Bakhtiyari tribe. It describes Layard's return journey through Basra and Baghdad to Constantinople, against a backdrop of civil unrest, feuds, kidnapping, theft and robbery, alternating with generous assistance. The book ends with Layard, undeterred by his experiences, planning his next archaeological excavations.