Discoveries Among the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon

In the 1850s, a young Englishman with no formal training in archaeology traveled to the sun-baked deserts of Mesopotamia and uncovered an empire the world had forgotten. Austen Henry Layard's account of his excavations at Nineveh and Babylon reads like the finest adventure fiction, yet every word is true. He describes the moment his spade first struck a palace wall buried for millennia, the thrill of deciphering cuneiform tablets that held theEpic of Gilgamesh, and the dangerous politics of excavating in the Ottoman Empire while rival French archaeologists competed for the same treasures. This is Victorian exploration at its most romantic: dust-choked mornings, Bedouin guides, crumbling ziggurats, and the slow revelation of reliefs depicting the wars and hunts of Assyrian kings. Layard writes with an infectious wonder that makes the ancient world feel genuinely new again. Anyone who has dreamed of finding something lost will recognize the electric excitement in these pages.