The Palaces of Nineveh and Persepolis Restored: An Essay on Ancient Assyrian and Persian Architecture

Following the excavation of Assyrian palaces in the mid-nineteenth century, ancient Mesopotamian imagery began to be used in European decorative arts, including jewelry and ceramics. Publicity in the form of news coverage and popular books around the excavations, removal of many sculptures from sites in northern Iraq to England and France, and public spectacles such as the reconstructed ‘Nineveh Court’ in the Crystal Palace at Sydenham, London, fostered a fascination with Assyria and Assyrian art among the Victorian public.

The Scottish architectural historian James Fergusson played a significant role in the conception of the Nineveh Court at the Sydenham Crystal Palace. He worked with the excavator, Austen Henry Layard, on the designs, and this book is dedicated to Layard. The frontispiece, a reconstruction of the palace of Sargon II (r. 722-705 BCE) at Khorsabad, ancient Dur-Sharrukin, incorporates double-bull column capitals from the Achaemenid Persian city of Persepolis at the tops of walls in what at the time was considered a likely way of providing light and ventilation to the palace rooms. The same solution was used in the design of the Nineveh Court.