of Layard’s work by the English government. Returning to Mesopotamia in 1849 Layard excavated the mound of Kuyunjik opposite Mosul, which was in fact Nineveh (and not Khorsabad as Botta had claimed). He found Sennacherib’s palace, and the royal library and archives, which contained thousands of clay tablets. Layard continued to dig the mounds around Mosul and then moved into southern Mesopotamia where he tested the sites of Babylon and Nippur. In 1851 he supervised the packing of another hundred or so cases of Assyrian artifacts and returned to England where he published Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon and the Monuments of Nineveh (1853), both of which were bestsellers. The exhibition of these extraordinary finds generated an Assyrian fashion and style in contemporary jewelry, hair and beard styles, theatrical productions, decoration, painting, poetry, and architecture, and provoked much controversy among scholars about biblical credibility and progress.

Layard himself left archaeology and took up politics and diplomacy. He became a member of Parliament and English ambassador to Madrid and Constantinople. In the latter position he was to encounter and help heinrich schliemann. The British excavation of Mesopotamia was continued by Hormuzd Rassam and William Kennett Loftus until 1855, and sponsored by the British Museum and a private Assyrian Excavation Fund. Scholars such as henry rawlinson began to decipher the cuneiform tablets that Layard had shipped home, although it was to take another thirty years to complete the task.

Tim Murray

See also

French Archaeology in Egypt and the Middle East

References

Lloyd, S. 1984. The Archaeology of Mesopotamia, rev. ed. London: Thames and Hudson.

Le Mas D’Azil

Le Mas D’Azil, a cave system with occupation deposits, is the type site of the Azilian industry dated to the Mesolithic/Epipaleolithic period (about 11,500–9500 b.p.) in france. Located in the Ariège region in the French Pyrenees, this huge and complex site, first dug by French historian eduoard piette in 1887, is also rich in Aurignacian and Magdalenian artifacts, particularly