Paul-Émile Botta

Paul-Émile Botta (December 6, 1802 – March 29, 1870) was a French archeologist and diplomat. He was one of the first to study the ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia. Botta became famous for his search of the ancient city of Nineveh, and the discovery of the palace of the Assyrian King Sargon II, in today’s Iraq.

Life

Paul-Emile Botta was born on December 6, 1802, in Torino, Italy, his father being distinguished Italian historian and physician Carl Botta, who immigrated to France in 1814. Botta at first wanted to follow father’s steps, so he studied medicine, but then decided to turn to politics.

Botta joined French diplomatic corps, and was initially sent to Alexandria, Egypt. However due to his interest in archaeology and the knowledge of Arabic language, and with a help from his friend, a famous scholar of Middle Eastern civilization Julius Mohl, he was transferred to the city of Mosul in Mesopotamia, then controlled by the Ottoman Empire. Botta quickly became keen to discover the lost cities of Assyria, which location has long been lost. The only account of their place was known from biblical references and some ancient text, but no contemporary accounts were recorded.

In 1842, Botta started with excavations in Kuyunjik, a town not far from the Tigris River. After years of digging he found nothing promising, and soon decided to move his entire team to a nearby village of Khorsabad, in 1843. There, only after few weeks of digging, he found the ruins of a larger infrastructure, which turned to be the palace of Sargon II, an Assyrian king who reigned from 722 to 705 B.C.E. The palace was a part of Sargon’s ancient capital of Dur Sharrukin. It was the first Assyrian site ever excavated.

For the site in Khorsabad Botta believed to be the site of an ancient Nineveh, mentioned in the Bible. He had cabled news of his discovery - "Nineveh est retrouvé" - to Paris. The French government immediately released substantial funds to finance his excavations there. They even sent a famous artist, Eugène Flandin, to document Botta's discoveries. That showed to be good move, since many discoveries afterwards eroded due to the sudden exposure to moisture and atmospheric pressure. Many artifacts were also lost during transportation.

In 1846, many statues from Khorsabad were moved to Paris and were exhibited in Louvre. In 1847 Louvre opened a separate section on Assyrian art. Botta retired from archeology after that.

After the success in his diplomatic mission in Mesopotamia, Botta was transferred first to Jerusalem (1846), and then to Tripoli (1868). He served diplomatic posts there until his death in Achères, France in 1870.

Work

Botta’s started to dig in Mesopotamia in the search for the ancient biblical city of Nineveh. At the time little was known about the exact location of the city, and Botta mostly relied in his search on references from the Bible or other ancient texts. He got a hunch based on local stories that the site of the city was in Kuyunjik, a small village near the Tigris River. He started with excavations, but after few years decided to stop and try somewhere else. As it turned our later, Botta simply did not dig deep enough, and the archeologist who continued with the excavations later actually found the ruins of an old city, that proved to be of Nineveh.

After unsuccessfully digging at Kuyunjik, Botta heard that at the nearby village of Khorsabad its residents have found bricks and sculpted stones that seemingly dated from ancient times. He started with the excavations there and immediately found a large infrastructure that lied beneath the surface. It turned out to be the palace of Assyrian king Sargon II. Botta’s team uncovered hundreds of artifacts, among which were statues of winged animals with human heads, relief pictorials, and dozens of inscriptions on the cuneiform, in the language of ancient Mesopotamia. Botta shipped several loads, full of artifacts, from Khorsabad to Paris.

In 1855, Victor Place, Botta's successor tried to send finds from Kish, Khorsabad, Nimrud and Assurbanipal's palace in Nineveh, 235 cases total, from Mosul down the Tigris to Basra, where they were to be loaded on a ship bound to Paris. One barge and four rafts were used, the rafts transported two winged bulls and two winged Genii, as well as other works of art. All vessels were overloaded. During the journey, they were several times attacked by "Arab pirates". After passing the toll station at Zejeyyak, the barge was rammed by pirates and sunk "one and a half hour downriver from Qurna", on the left bank of the river. One raft, laden with a winged bull later sunk in the middle of the Shatt-al-Arab near Kout el Fiengoui Only two rafts reached Basra. The finds are in the Louvre and the British Museum today. Several attempts to recover the boats in 1855 failed. Among the lost artifacts was, for example, the famous relief depicting the sack of the Urartian town of Musasir during Sargon II of Assyria's 8th campaign.

Legacy

With his work in Mesopotamia Botta significantly contributed toward the general knowledge of the ancient civilization of Assyria. His excavations were the first that were ever undertaken on an Assyrian site and as such played a key role in the establishment of the branch of the Middle Eastern archaeology. The discovery of the palace of king Sargon II revealed many beautiful artifacts, many of which are still exhibited in Louvre Museum in Paris.

Publications

• Botta, Paul-Emile. 1850. M. Botta's letters on the discoveries at Nineveh. Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans
• Botta, Paul-Emile. 1972 (original published 1849-1850). Monument de Ninive (5 vols.). Neudrucks Osnabrück

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Bonomi, Joseph. 2001. Nineveh and Its Palaces: The Discoveries of Botta and Layard, Applied to the Elucidation of Holy Writ. Adamant Media Corporation. ISBN 1421253534
• BookRags.com Paul Emile Botta. Retrieved on December 14, 2006
• Buckingham James S. 1851. The buried city of the East, Nineveh: A narrative of the discoveries of Mr. Layard and M. Botta at Nimroud and Khorsabad. National Illustrated Library
• Encyclopedia Britannica Paul-Émile Botta - Retrieved on December 14, 2006

External links

• The Assyrian Empire – About the history of Assyrian Empire
• Nineveh The Habitation of Ninus – About the ancient city of Nineveh
• Khorsabad (Iraq) – Some information on excavations at Khorsabad
• Winged Bull – A picture of Winged Bull, now in Louvre, Paris
• A Brief History of Archaeology in Mesopotamia - History of excavations in Mesopotamia
• The Cuneiform script – About the ancient cuneiform inscriptions

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