Just as we have to go very far back indeed in the history of the Manuscript Department of the British Museum, in order to find an accession quite as notable as are—taking them as a whole—the manuscripts of the Nitrian monasteries, so have we also to do in the history of the several Departments of Antiquities, in order to find any parallel to the acquisitions of monuments of art and archæology made during the thirty years between 1840 and 1870. In point of variety of interest, in truth, there is no parallel at all to be found.
In archæology, however—as in scientific discovery, or in mechanical invention—every great burst of new light will be seen, if we look closely enough, to have had its remote precursive gleams, howsoever faint or howsoever little noticed they may have been.
Austen Henry Layard, for example, is a most veritable ‘discoverer.’ Nevertheless, the researches of Layard link themselves with those of Claudius Rich, and with the still earlier glimpses, and the mere note-book jottings, of Carsten Niebuhr, as well as with the explorations of Layard’s contemporary and most able French fellow-investigator, Monsieur Botta. In like manner, Nathan Davis is the undoubted disinterrer of old Carthage, but the previous labours of the Italian canon and archæologist Spano, of Cagliari, and those of the French geographers De Dreux and Dureau de La Malle, imperfect as they all were, helped to put him upon the quest which was destined to receive so rich a reward.
It is obvious, therefore, that a tolerably satisfactory account of the researches of the renowned archæologists mentioned at the head of this chapter must be prefaced with some notices of much earlier and much less successful labours than theirs; and a thorough account would need greatly more than that. But, at present, I cannot hope to give either the one or the other. Rapid glances at the recent investigations are all that, for the moment, are permitted me, and for the perfunctory manner of these I shall have to make not a little demand on the reader’s indulgence. The subject-matter is rich enough to claim a volume to itself; nor would the story be found to lack well-sustained and varied interest, even if retold at large.
The first inquiries and explorations in Lycia of Sir Charles Fellows began several years earlier than those in Assyria of Mr. Austen Layard, but an intelligible narrative of what Layard did, in 1845, must needs start with a notice, be it ever so brief, of what Botta had been doing in 1842. The Lycian excavations were also effectively begun in 1842. They were, in fact, contemporaneous with the first excavations at Nineveh. I begin, therefore, with the closely-linked labours of Botta and of Layard, prefacing them with a glance at the previous pursuits and aims in life of our distinguished fellow-countryman.
Austen Henry Layard and his early career.
Austen Henry Layard is an Englishman, notwithstanding his birth in Paris (5th of March, 1817), and his descent from one of the many Huguenot families who (in one sense) do honour to France for their sufferings for conscience sake, and who (in many more senses than one) do honour to England by the way in which zealous and persevering exertions in the service of their adopted country have enabled them to pluck the flowers of fame, or of distinction, from amidst the sharp thorns of adversity. Austen Layard is the grandson of the honoured Dr. Layard, Dean of Bristol, and he began active life, whilst yet very young, in a solicitor’s office in the City of London. But he had scarcely reached twenty-two years of age before family circumstances enabled him to gratify a strong passion for Eastern travel. Archæology had no share, at first, in the attractions which the Levant presented to his youthful enterprise. But a fervid nature, a good education, and a wonderful power of self-adaptation to new social circumstances, made the mind of the young traveller a fitting seedplot for antiquarian knowledge, whenever the opportunity of acquiring it should come.
The journey through Asia Minor and Syria in 1839–1840.
To a man of that stamp it would be impossible that he should tread near those ancient ruins, every stone of which must needs connect itself with some ‘reverend history’ or other—when the discerning eye should at length pore upon it and ponder it—without the ambition stirring within him to make at least an earnest attempt to explore and to decipher. To this particular man and his companion in travel, Fortune was propitious, by dint of her very parsimony. As he says himself: ‘No experienced dragoman measured our distances or appointed our stations. We were honoured with no conversations by pashas, nor did we seek any civilities from governors. We neither drew tears nor curses from the villagers by seizing their horses, or searching their houses for provisions; |Nineveh and its Remains (1849), vol. i, p. 2.| their welcome was sincere; their scanty fare was placed before us; we ate, and came, and went in peace.’
It was almost thirty years ago—about the middle of April, 1840—that Mr. Layard looked upon those vast ruins on the east bank of the Tigris, opposite Mósul, which include the now famous mounds of Konyunjik and of Nebbi Yunus. Having gazed on them with an incipient longing—even then—to explore them thoroughly, he and his companion rode into the desert, and looked with new wonder at the great mound of Kàlàh Sherghat, the site of which is by some geographers identified with the Assur of the book Genesis.[[37]] After that hasty and tantalising visit, in the spring of 1840, Layard did not again see Mósul until the summer of 1842, when he was again travelling Tatar, and hurrying to Constantinople. In the interval, he had often thought of his early purpose, and had talked of it to many travellers. |Botta’s first discoveries.| Now, in 1842, he heard that what he had hitherto been able only to contemplate, as the wished-for task of the future, Monsieur Botta, the new French Consul at Mósul, had, for some months, been actually working upon; although, as yet, with very small success. Our countryman encouraged the French Consul in his undertaking, and presently learned that by him the first real monument of old Assyria had been uncovered. This primary discovery was not made at Kouyunjik, but at Khorsabad, near the river Khauser, many miles away from the place at which the first French excavations had been made, early in 1842.