Sennacherib's Palace at Nineveh: The Drawings of H. A. Churchill and the Discoveries of H. J. Ross

Abstract

Inspired and also shamed by John Russell's discovery of the fair copy of Layard's excavation notes for Sennacherib's palace at Nineveh (Russell, 1995), I have recently gone through the extensive Layard Papers in the British Library in the hope of further interesting finds. From his first excavations at Nimrud and Nineveh, November 1845–June 1847, there is very little, only some notes and sketch plans of Nimrud; but these would have been only a fraction of the records Layard originally made. He presumably discarded all others, such as field notes, journals and diaries, sketches and site plans, after completing Nineveh and its Remains (1849). Of the excavations on Sennacherib's palace at Kuyunjik, in May and June 1847, there is only Layard's later fair copy of his field notes LN 1 (Russell, 1995, pp. 72–7 and SWPS, pp. 10–12). By comparison, for his second campaign, October 1849–April 1851, there is a wealth of material, both for Nimrud and especially for Kuyunjik, and although much of this does not necessarily add greatly to our knowledge of Layard's discoveries, his notebooks and diaries certainly do contain new and interesting details. These documentary sources will be used in a separate article, charting the course of Layard's excavation of Sennacherib's palace.