Nineveh and Its Remains:

A charming set of Layard's first expedition to Nineveh, resulting in some of the most important archaeological discoveries of the nineteenth century.

The work gives an account of Layard's discoveries in Mesopotamia beginning in 1840. There he first came into contact with the excavations on the Kuyunjik Mound near Mosul directed by Emil Botta. In 1842 Layard returned to Constantinople where he was employed by Stratford Canning, who encouraged his archaeological interests and eventually undertook to meet the cost of excavations on the Kuyunjik site which Botta had by then abandoned. Layard was enabled to return to Mosul and begin his own excavations, which continued until 1847 when he returned to England. In fact the book's title is misleading since most of the material deals with discoveries made at Nimrud, not at Nineveh.

First edition, seventh thousand; 2 vols, 8vo (22 x 15 cm); lithographed frontispiece in each volume, 20 plates, 4 folding plans, a folding map and numerous illustrations in the text, contemporary ownership inscriptions to titles and front endpapers; later rebacked retaining original pictorial cloth boards, manuscript spine labels, gatherings a little cracked but solid, slightly soiled, a good copy; xxx, [iv], 399; xii, 491 pp.