Nineveh and Its Palaces: The Discoveries of Botta and Layard, Applied to the Elucidation of Holy Writ

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.

In Nineveh and Its Palaces, the artist and Egyptologist Joseph Bonomi the Younger recounts and discusses the work of the two main early excavators of the palaces, Paul-Émile Botta and Austen Henry Layard, who also wrote their own accounts of the discoveries. Bonomi also aimed to offer a broader survey of recent Mesopotamian and Iranian discoveries, including other sites such as Babylon, Persepolis, and the inscriptions of the Achaemenid Persian king Darius I (r. 522–486 BCE) at Bisitun. The book’s title highlights the particular interest of much of the Victorian public: the biblical significance of Botta, Layard, and others uncovering the palaces of Nineveh, previously known only through the Bible and Classical sources, and the reliefs and inscriptions of kings such as the biblical Sennacherib.