Archæology and the BibleBarton, George A. (George Aaron)
Religion
Archæology and the Bible
Barton, George A. (George Aaron)
Bible -- Antiquities; Egypt -- Antiquities; Middle East -- Antiquities
Botta and his successor, Victor Place, excavated intermittently at
Khorsabad for ten years, uncovering the palace and making a plan of it,
excavating the city walls and gates, studying the drainage of the ancient
town, and fully describing the whole. Although a part of the antiquities
found were lost in the Tigris by the wreck of a raft on which they were
being floated down the river, a large collection reached France, where
they are preserved in the Louvre.
_By Layard._--The success of Botta fired the enthusiasm of Austen Henry
Layard, a young Englishman of Huguenot descent, who began to excavate in
1845 at Nimrûd, a mound further down the Tigris than Mosul, and the site
of the Biblical Calah (Gen. 10:11). His money was at first furnished by a
few friends, but as he soon discovered a royal palace there similar to the
one Botta had unearthed at Khorsabad, the trustees of the British Museum
commissioned him to excavate for them. He thus continued the work
intermittently until 1849. During this time he spent most of his energy
upon the mound of Kouyunjik, where he discovered another royal palace.
This palace proved to be the work of Sennacherib, the son of Sargon (named
in 2 Kings 18:13; Isa. 36), who built the one at Khorsabad, while the
palace at Calah was, in its final form, the work of Esarhaddon, the son of
Sennacherib. (See 2 Kings 19:37.) The palace at Nineveh had in turn been
repaired by Esarhaddon’s son, Assurbanipal.
_By Loftus and Rawlinson._--As these excavations progressed, others were
stimulated to make minor explorations. Thus in 1850 William Kennett Loftus
carried on small excavations at the mound of Warka, the site of the
Biblical Erech (Gen. 10:10), in southern Babylonia, from which he
recovered important antiquities. From 1851-1855 the oversight of English
excavations was entrusted to Sir Henry C. Rawlinson, the British
consul-general at Bagdad. Under his direction J. E. Taylor, British
vice-consul at Bassorah, made an excavation at the mound of Mugheir, the
site of Ur of the Chaldees, where he unearthed important inscriptions. At
the same time Loftus was traveling about Babylonia collecting antiquities.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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