Layard, Austen Henry

Born Mar. 5, 1817, in Paris; died July 5,1894, in London. British archaeologist and diplomat. Envoy extraordinary to Madrid from 1869 to 1877 and ambassador to Istanbul from 1877 to 1880.

In the course of two expeditions (1845–47 and 1849–51, the second with H. Rassam), Layard excavated the ruins of two Assyrian capitals—Calah and Nineveh—and conducted archaeological excavations in Babylon, Borsippa, Nippur, and other ancient cities. Five palaces dating from the ninth to seventh centuries B.C. were discovered in Calah. A palace of the seventh century B.C. with King Ashurbanipal’s library (about 20,000 clay tablets) was found in Nineveh.