of the Parisian Asiatic Society, an association that had been created in 1829 to
promote the study of Oriental languages and cultures (Chapters 8 and 9). Mohl
saw the potential of Rich’s collection and dreamt of making the Louvre the
major European museum holding antiquities from Mesopotamia. He convinced
the French authorities to send a consul to Mosul to undertake excavations and
send sculptures and inscriptions back to the Louvre. In 1847, only four years
after the arrival in the area of the consul-excavator, Paul E ́mile Botta (1802–70),
the Louvre had managed to open theWrst collection of Assyrian monuments to
the public. The early Louvre collections came mainly from a palace unearthed in
the Assyrian city of Khorsabad, a site about ten miles away from Nineveh, where
excavations had proved diYcult (Larsen 1996; Moorey 1991: 7–14). The excav-
ations were useful for biblical studies. The material brought to Paris was
analysed by, among others, the French scholar Adrien de Longperier (1816–
82), who was able to read in one of the cuneiform inscriptions the name of Sar-
gin and identiWed it with the name of Sargon, King of Assyria, mentioned in the
book of Isaiah 20:1. The palace found by Botta was, therefore, that of the
Assyrian King Sargon II (c.721–705bce), one of the Mesopotamian rulers
mentioned in the Old Testament.
Britain’s engagement in Mesopotamian archaeology had a very diVerent
start. In Chapter 1 a distinction was made between the European Continental
or State-interventionist model distinguished by the governmentWnancial
backing to archaeological expeditions as against the Utilitarian model fol-
lowed in Britain and the US which relied on private funding. The archaeology
in Mesopotamia was not an exception: despite the potential of the British
Museum display of Rich’s antiquities there was no investment in a consul-
excavator like the French Botta. Only private initiative, the insistence of a
young English man, Austen Henry Layard, through the mediation of the
Ambassador at Constantinople from 1844, Sir Stratford Canning, made the
British Museum establish him as the representative of Britain at Mosul.
The museum eventually sponsored Layard’s work in 1846, but only after he
had spent one year digging at Nimrud, and with a sum of money far from that
bestowed by France on Botta (Larsen 1996: 23, 109).
The interest in the biblical account seems to have been one of the factors
that spurred Layard’s interest in Mesopotamia. Yet, this was not believed by
one of his friends, who in 1846 cynically commented to him:
The interest about your stones is very great, I hear—and if you can as I said before
attach a biblical importance to your discoveries you will come the complete dodge
over this world of fools and dreamers; you can get some religious fellow to inspire you
with the necessary cant, for which I won’t think a bit the worse of you.
(Moorey 1991: 3).Biblical Archaeology 141