[LAYARD, AUSTEN HENRY]. Discoveries in 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. London: John Murray, 1853.
First edition. Cloth-bound, hardcover, octavo (23cm x 14.5cm x 6cm), pp. xxiii, 686, [2] publisher's ads. English text. Bound in publisher's original brown fine-ribbed cloth, spine lettered in gilt, intricate decoration of the Great Winged Bull across the spine and both boards in blind, reddish brown surface-paper endpapers. Engraved folding frontispiece and 4 similar plates (all but one folding) depicting plans and elevations, 8 tinted lithographic plates, plate of inscriptions, 2 engraved folding maps at end, wood-engraved illustrations in the text. Printed footnotes. Rear index in double columns. Printed by Spottiswoodes and Shaw. Condition: GOOD to VERY GOOD. Binding tight and secure. Trivial marks to covers. Slight rubbing to spine ends and points. Interior largely well-preserved, some minor tears to folding plates. Previous owner signature neatly inked to front endpaper.
Notes: First edition, in the original decorated cloth - one of the most attractive publisher's bindings of the 19th century. Layard's second British Museum expedition (1849-51) yielded "important trophies and discoveries, including the cuneiform library of Sennacherib's grandson Ashurbanipal, on which most modern knowledge of Assyrian culture is founded" (ODNB). Layard (1817-1894) was intended for a career in his uncle's solicitors' office in London, but found the work constraining. Another uncle, living in Ceylon, suggested that he join him there to practise as a barrister and introduced him to Edward Mitford, who was also intending to go east. The pair travelled overland and left England in 1839 with a commission from the Royal Geographical Society to research. They visited Jerusalem, Mosul, and Baghdad before parting company, Layard spending some time among the tribes of the Bakhtiari mountains and becoming proficient in Arabic and Persian. He returned to Constantinople in 1842 and entered the employment of the British ambassador Stratford Canning, whom he persuaded to support his excavations at the mount of Nimrud, near Mosul. After the publication of his first book, Nineveh and its Remains (1849), he realized that Kouyunjik not Nimrud, was the site of ancient Nineveh. He travelled to Constantinople in 1849, and he undertook further excavations at Kouyunjik until 1851. Abbey, Travel 364; Atabey 687; Blackmer 969.
