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. xxiii, (1), 686pp., 5 folding maps. 11 plates hors texte (partly tinted lithographs). Prof. illus. (woodcut figs.). Sm. stout 4to. Orig. cloth. First edition of this authoritative study on the Assyrian cities of Nineveh and Babylon based on Layard's second expedition to the region, richly illustrated with five folding maps, 11 lithographic plates (two folding, eight tinted), and numerous in-text wood engravings a very nice copy in the original cloth. Chief among Layard's groundbreaking achievements was the discovery of thousands of cuneiform tablets that comprised the great library at Ashurbanipal. These finds, of unparalleled importance in the study of the Assyrian Empire, at once propelled him to the first rank of 19th-century English archaeologists. "Between October 1849 and April 1851 Layard conducted major excavations at Kuyunjik [Nineveh], funded by the British Museum and described in a second book, Nineveh and Babylon (1853). These yielded further important trophies and discoveries, including the cuneiform library of Sennacherib's grandson Ashurbanipal, on which most modern knowledge of Assyrian culture is founded" (ODNB). Blackmer 969. Abbey Travel 364.