1853 Nineveh & Babylon Discoveries (Ashurbanipal) A.H. Layard, 1st U.S. Edition

Description: Discoveries Among the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon; With Travels in Armenia, Kurdistan, and the Desert: Being the Result of a Second Expedition Undertaken for the Trustees of the British Museum. By Austen H. Layard, M.P., Author of “Nineveh and Its Remains.” With Maps, Plans, and Illustrations. New York: G.P. Putnam and Co., 10. Park Place. 1853. First American Edition. 687 p., many illustrations & seven fold-outs (complete). Decorated green cloth binding measures 9 x 6”, 8vo. In fair condition. Decorated green cloth boards normally scuffed at edges and worn/bumped at corners. Head and tail of spine collapsed; headbands remain intact. Gilt lettering and deco dulled & soiled, but still attractive on front board and spine. Rear board's gilt deco severely dulled. Edges of text-block deckled. Front gutter split at title page with some exposed binding. Title page chipped at fore-edge. Normal toning and age-staining; off-setting around plates and fold-outs. Crayon scribbles and drawings found throughout Index & rear fly-leaf, end-page, and paste-down. Fold-outs remain intact with some normal toning at creases; some fold-outs exhibit tearing around edges. Binding is intact, with some exposed cording throughout text-block. Please see photos and ask questions, if any, before purchasing. Austen Henry Layard (1817 – 1894) was an English Assyriologist, traveller, cuneiformist, art historian, draughtsman, collector, politician and diplomat. He was born to a mostly English family in Paris and largely raised in Italy. He is best known as the excavator of Nimrud and of Nineveh, where he uncovered a large proportion of the Assyrian palace reliefs known, and in 1851 the library of Ashurbanipal. Most of his finds are now in the British Museum. He made a large amount of money from his best-selling accounts of his excavations. He had a political career between 1852, when he was elected as a Member of Parliament, and 1869, holding various junior ministerial positions. He was then made ambassador to Madrid, then Constantinople, living much of the time in a palazzo he bought in Venice. 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. He is credited with discovering the Library of Ashurbanipal during this period. 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 despatched to England the splendid specimens which now form the greater part of the collection of Assyrian antiquities in the British Museum. Layard believed that the native Syriac Christian communities living throughout the Near East were descended from the ancient Assyrians. First American Edition. With all Plates. Gift quality. COLH1853BJKB 10/24 - HK2140

Price: 300 USD

Location: Harrisburg, Pennsylvania

End Time: 2024-12-19T17:27:45.000Z

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