Austen Henry Layard

Austen Henry Layard (born March 5, 1817 – died July 5, 1894) was a British amateur archaeologist, cuneiformist, art historian, collector, author and diplomat, best known as the excavator of Nimrud. His excavations greatly increased knowledge of the ancient civilization of Assyria.

Biography

Early life

Austen Layard was born in Paris, France, in the family of Huguenot descent. His father, Henry P.J. Layard, of the Ceylon Civil Service, was the son of Charles Peter Layard, dean of Bristol, and grandson of Daniel Peter Layard, the physician. Through his mother Marianne Austen he inherited Spanish blood. His uncle was Benjamin Austen, a London solicitor and close friend of Benjamin Disraeli in the 1820s and 1830s.

This strain of cosmopolitanism must have been greatly strengthened by the circumstances of his education. Much of his youth he spent in Italy, England, France and Switzerland, where he received part of his education, and acquired a taste for the fine arts and a love of travel. After spending nearly six years in the office of his uncle Benjamin, he decided to leave England for Ceylon to obtain an appointment in the civil service. He started in 1839 with the intention of making an overland journey across Asia.

Archeologist

After wandering for many months, chiefly in Persia, and having abandoned his intention of proceeding to Ceylon, he returned in 1842 to Constantinople, where he made the acquaintance with Sir Stratford Canning, the British ambassador, who employed him in various unofficial diplomatic missions in Turkey. In 1845, encouraged and assisted by Canning, Layard left Constantinople to make explorations among the ruins of Assyria.

Layard subsequently explored the ruins of Nimrud on the Tigris, and the great mound of Kuyunjik, near Mosul (in today's Iraq), already partly excavated by Paul-Émile Botta. In Luristan, Layard for the first time encountered the Bakhtiyari tribe, and spent few months with them. His book, Early Adventures in Persia, Susiana, and Babylonia (1887) describes his life among the Bakhtiyari.

Layard started the excavations at Nimrud in 1845. He discovered the Assyrian monuments and cuneiform inscriptions for which he believed were the remains of an ancient Assyrian capital of Nineveh. He correctly identified the site of Kuyunjik as Nineveh.

Layard returned to England in 1848, publishing Nineveh and its Remains: With an Account of a Visit to tile Chaldaean Christians of Kurdistan, and the Yezidis, or Devil-worshippers; and an Inquiry into the Painters and Arts of the Ancient Assyrians (2 vols., 1848-1849). To illustrate the antiquities described in this work he published a large folio volume of Illustrations of the Monuments of Nineveh (1849).

After spending a few months in England, and receiving the degree of D.C.L. from the University of Oxford, Layard returned to Constantinople as attaché to the British embassy, and in August 1849, started on a second expedition, in the course of which he extended his investigations to the ruins of Babylon and the mounds of southern Mesopotamia. His record of this expedition, Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon, which was illustrated by another folio volume, called A Second Series of the Monuments of Nineveh, was published in 1853. During these expeditions, often in circumstances of great difficulty, Layard dispatched to England the splendid specimens which now form the greater part of the collection of Assyrian antiquities in the British Museum.

Politician

In early 1850s Layard turned to politics. He was elected as a Liberal member for Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire in 1852, and was working as under-secretary for foreign affairs. He was in the Crimea (in today's Ukraine) during the Crimean War. In 1855 he was elected lord rector of Aberdeen University, and on June 15 moved a resolution in the House of Commons (defeated by a large majority) declaring that in public appointments merit had been sacrificed to private influence and an adherence to routine. After being defeated at Aylesbury in 1857, he visited India to investigate the causes of the Indian Mutiny against British rule. He unsuccessfully run for an office in York in 1859, but was elected in Southwark in 1860, and from 1861 to 1866 was under-secretary for foreign affairs in the successive administrations of Lord Palmerston and Lord John Russell.

Layard became increasingly critical of the British government, especially on her handling the Crimean war and her imperialistic policies. That eventually alienated him from politics.

In 1866 he was appointed a trustee of the British Museum, and in 1868 chief commissioner of works in William Ewart Gladstone's government and a member of the Privy Council. He retired from parliament in 1869, on being sent as envoy extraordinary to Madrid. The same year he married to Mary Enid Evelyn Guest, a woman he had relationship since 1840s.

In 1877 he was appointed by Lord Beaconsfield ambassador at Constantinople, where he remained until Gladstone's return to power in 1880, when he finally retired from public life.

In 1878, on the occasion of the Berlin Congress, he received the Grand Cross of the Bath. Layard's political life was somewhat stormy. His manner was brusque, and his advocacy of the causes which he had at heart, though always perfectly sincere, was vehement to the point sometimes of recklessness.

Later life

Layard retired to Venice, where he devoted much of his time to collecting pictures of the Venetian school, and to writing on Italian art. On this subject he was a disciple of his friend Giovanni Morelli, whose views he embodied in his revision of Franz Kugler's Handbook of Painting, Italian Schools (1887). He wrote also an introduction to Constance Jocelyn ffoulkes's translation of Morelli's Italian Painters (1892-1893), and edited that part of Murray's Handbook of Rome (1894) which deals with pictures. In 1887 he published, from notes taken at the time, a record of his first journey to the East, entitled Early Adventures in Persia, Susiana and Babylonia. An abbreviation of this work, which as a book of travel is even more delightful than its predecessors, was published in 1894, shortly after the author's death, with a brief introductory notice by Lord Aberdare. Layard also from time to time contributed papers to various learned societies, including the Huguenot Society, of which he was first president.

Layard died in London, England, on July 5, 1894.

Legacy

Layard’s excavations at Nimrud provided important information on the ancient Assyrian civilization and the culture of Mesopotamia in general. He published numerous works based on his two expeditions, in which he presented, in simple layman language, results of his archeological activities, and such made this ancient culture closer to Western readers.

Publications

• Layard, A. H. 1848-49. Nineveh and its remains: With an account of a visit to the Chaldaean Christians of Kurdistan, and the Yezidis, or Devil-warshippers; And an enquiry into the manners and arts of the ancient Assyrians. London: John Murray.
• Layard, A. H. 1849. Illustrations of the Monuments of Nineveh. London: John Murray
• Layard, A. H. 1849-53. The Monuments of Nineveh. London: John Murray.
• Layard, A. H. 1851. Inscriptions in the cuneiform character from Assyrian monuments. London: Harrison and sons.
• Layard, A. H. 1853. Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon. London: John Murray.
• Layard, A. H. 1853. A Second Series of the Monuments of Nineveh. London: John Murray
• Layard, A. H. 1854. The Nineveh Court in the Crystal Palace. London: John Murray.
• Layard, A. H. 1887. Early Adventures in Persia, Susiana, and Babylonia. London: John Murray.
• Layard, A. H. 1903. Autobiography and Letters from his childhood until his appointment as H.M. Ambassador at Madrid. (vol. 1-2) London: John Murray.
• Layard, A. H. 2005 (original published in 1852). A Popular Account of Discoveries at Nineveh. University of Michigan Library. ISBN 1425543049

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Brackman, Arnold C. 1978. The Luck of Nineveh: Archaeology's Great Adnventure. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company. ISBN 007007030X
• Jerman, B.R. 1960. The Young Disraeli. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
• Larsen, Mogens T. 1996. The Conquest of Assyria. Routledge.. ISBN 041514356X
• Lloyd, Seton. 1981. Foundations in the Dust: The Story of Mesopotamian Exploration. London; New York: Thames & Hudson. ISBN 0500050384
• Waterfield, Gordon. 1963. Layard of Nineveh. London: John Murray
• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

External links

• Autobiography and letters from his childhood until his appointment as H.M. Ambassador at Madrid (vol. 2) - Full-text of Layard’s book (1903)
• A Popular Account of Discoveries at Nineveh – Full-text of Layard’s book (1852)
• A Second Series of the Monuments of Nineveh - Downloadable version of Layard’s book (1853)
• Early Archaeology in Mesopotamia – History of the explorations in Mesopotamia
• Layard’s life and work – Extensive biography with lot of pictures and photos
• Sir Austen Henry Layard – Biography on Minnesota State University website
• The Monuments of Nineveh – Downloadable version of Layard’s book
• The Monuments of Nineveh – Layard’s work from 1849

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