Austen Henry Layard

the very honourable Sir Austen Henry Layard (March 5th, 1817 1 - July 5th, 1894 1), is a traveller, archeologist, cuneiformist, historian of art, draftsman, collector, writer and known Diplomate especially to have made the first excavations of Kalkhu.

Biography

Born with Paris in a family Huguenot E, he is the son of Henry P.J. Layard which works in the colonial administration of Ceylon, itself wire of Charles Peter Layard, senior of Bristol and grandson of Daniel Peter Layard a doctor. The mother of Austen is the girl of Nathaniel Austen, banking of Ramsgate and partly of Spanish origin . His/her uncle is Benjamin Austen, a Solicitor of London and a friend of Benjamin Disraeli in the years 1820 and 1830.

He passes most of his childhood in Italy and learns how there to like art and the voyages, but he is also educated in England, France and Suisse. There after having worked six years in the office of his uncle Benjamin Austen, it leaves for Ceylon while hoping to find work in the administration of this British colony. It begins its voyage in 1839, taking the terrestrial road through the Asia.

After having roved several months, mainly in Persian, and having given up its project to go to Ceylon, it turns over to Constantinople in 1842. It become acquainted there with Sir Stratford Canning, the British Embassy ur, which engages it and makes him make nonofficial diplomatic missions in the European part of the Turkey. In 1845, encouraged by Canning, it leaves Constantinople to explore the ruins of the Assyrie, with which its name is associated today. At the time of one of these voyages in the area, its curiosity was waked up by the ruins of Kalkhu on the Tigris and by the tumulus of Kuyunjik close to Mosul, already partially excavated by Paul-Emile Botta.

Layard remains around Mosul until 1847, excavating in Kuyunjik and Kalkhu and observing the living conditions of several people of the area. It takes under its wing one of its assistants, Hormuzd Rassam, which will continue the excavations when it turns over to England in 1848, where it publishes Nineveh and its Remains: with year Account off off has Visit to bast Chaldaean Christians Kurdistan, and the Yezidis, gold Devil-worshippers , and Inquiry into the Painters and Arts off the Ancient Assyrians (two volumes, 1848-1849).

To illustrate the ancient objects described in its books it publishes a great folio volume off called Illustrations the Monuments off Nineveh (1849). After having spent several months to England and having been graduate of a DCL of the University of Oxford, it goes back to Constantinople as a British embassy attach3e, and in August 1849 begins the one second forwarding during which it extends his investigations to the ruins of Babylon and with the tumulus of the southernmost Mésopotamie. Its writings on this forwarding, Discoveries off the Ruins off Nineveh and Babylon (1863), are illustrated by another folio, has Second Series off the Monuments off Nineveh . During this forwarding it succeeds in sending splendid examples of objects in England; they are today in the Assyrian collection of the British Museum.

Separately the archaeological interest of its work by identifying Kuyunjik like the site of old the Ninive, and by providing many archaeological information to the researchers, the two books of Layard count among the best accounts of voyage in English.

It is interested then in the policy. Liberal appointed elected official of Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire in 1852, he is under-secretary of the foreign affairs for several weeks, but he criticizes the government openly, in particular with regard to the military forces. He is in the Crimea during the war, and becomes member of the committee chosen to inquire into the control of forwarding. In 1855 he refuses an offer of work on behalf of Lord Palmerston not having milked with the foreign affairs and becomes Lord Rector of the Université of Aberdeen. June 15th of the same year it tries to make pass a resolution to the House of Commons; it largely fails. The resolution declared that the administration was not any more that a Méritocratie, the merit having been sacrificed in favor of the personal influence and adherence to the routine. After its defeat at the polls with Aylesbury in 1857, he visits the India to inquire into the causes of the Révolte of Cipayes. He réessaye to be made elect with York in 1859 without success but is elected with Southwark the following year. From 1861 to 1866 he is under-secretary with the foreign affairs under the governments of Lord Palmerston and Lord John Russell.

In 1866 one elects it curator of British Museum, and in 1868 police chief as a chief of public works to the government of William Ewart Gladstone and member of the private Conseil. It takes its retirement of the House of Commons in 1869 when one it envoit as an extraordinary envoy with Madrid. In 1877 Lord Beaconsfield appoints it ambassador in Constantinople, where it remains there until the return to the capacity of Gladstone in 1880, when it withdraws public life definitively. In 1878, at the time of the Congress of Berlin, one gives him the Ordre of the Bath.

The political life of Layard was particularly surging. Its attitude was rather abrupt and the passion which it showed on the subjects which held it with heart was burning, sometimes at the point to be imprudent.

It is withdrawn with Venice, where it spends its time to collect fabrics of the Venetian school and writing on the Italian art. On this subject he was disciple of his friend Giovanni Morelli; he off presents his point of view in his revision of the Handbook Painting, Italian Schools (1887) of Franz Kugler. He writes also an introduction to the translation of Constancy Jocelyn Foulkes of the book of Morelli, Italian Painters (1892-1893), and publishes off this part of the Murray' S Handbook Rome (1894). In 1887 it publishes, starting from notes taken at the time, an account of its first voyage to the Middle East, heading Early Adventures in Persia, Susiana and Babylonia . A shortened version of this work is published in 1894, shortly after its death, with a short foreword of Lord Aberdare. Layard writes also tests for several associations, like the Huguenot Society , of which he is the first president. He dies in London.

Works

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