title: Nineveh and Its Remains: The Gripping Journals of the Man Who Discovered the Buried Assyrian Cities
author: Austen Henry Layard Esq.  DCL
description: <strong>Austen Henry Layard</strong>, Esq., DCL (1817-1894) was a traveler, archeologist, art historian, author, and politician. He led a series of excavations in the Middle East, primarily in Persia, from 1845 to 1847. His most famous discovery was the Library of Ashurbanipal in 1849. Layard also served as trustee of the British Museum, where many of his excavated relics still reside on display.
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  # Failure
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### H.M. Tomlinson
  
  
  This page copyright © 2002 Munsey's.
  
  
  http://www.munseys.com
  
  THE stranger and I had that lofty chamber
  
  
  of the British Museum to ourselves, as well as I could see. I could
  
  
  not see far, except upwards to the skylight. The full extent of the
  
  
  room's spacious pallor was screened by two enormous Assyrian bulls.
  
  
  That room looked and smelt like antiquity, dead, meaningless, and now
  
  
  harmless, as well as one knew. There was no sound, except an
  
  
  occasional sepulchral rumble, which might have been an echo out of
  
  
  Nineveh. The echo got lost, perhaps, when Sennacherib's army began to
  
  
  march cheering to another conquest, and those awful bulls hadn't warned
  
  
  it the cheering was all over, long, long ago.
  
  
    
  I stopped at that particular cabinet where the stranger stood, by
  
  
  chance. My curiosity was not strong. This was only the first case in
  
  
  the room. That grave echo from the past depresse