Three years after Botta’s arrival in Mosul, Austen Henry Layard began his memorable excavations at Nimroud, a short distance to the south of Nineveh. So successful was he in his work here and subsequently at Kuyunjik--Citadel of Nineveh--that he was soon able to send a larger and a more valuable collection of antiquities to the British Museum than that with which Botta had enriched the Louvre. Great, indeed, was the excitement in France and England when the treasures of the long-buried palaces of Nineveh were placed on exhibition and when people had before their eyes tangible evidence of that famed Assyrian capital which for more than twenty centuries had left no other trace of its existence than a name which was a synonym of fabulous wealth and magnificence. In a work published shortly after Botta and Layard had electrified the world by their startling discoveries, a well-known English scholar, speaking of the unearthing of Nineveh, wrote: More than two thousand years had it thus lain in its unknown grave, when a French savant and a wandering English scholar, urged by a noble inspiration, sought the seat of the once powerful empire, and, searching till they found the dead city, threw off its shroud of sand and ruin and revealed once more to an astonished and curious world the temples, the palaces, the idols; the representations of war and the triumphs of peaceful art of the ancient Assyrians. The Nineveh of Scripture, the Nineveh of the oldest historians; the Nineveh--twin-sister of Babylon--glorying in a civilization of pomp and power, all traces of which were believed to be gone; the Nineveh, in which the captive tribes of Israel had labored and wept, was, after a sleep of twenty centuries, again brought to light. The proofs of ancient splendor were again beheld by living eyes, and, by the skill of the draftsman and the pen of antiquarian travelers, made known to the world.[362] Notices like this which frequently appeared in books and periodical literature had the effect of exciting widespread enthusiasm for the advancement of Assyrian research. Societies were organized for promoting excavations on a larger scale than was feasible for the first explorers, who were greatly hampered by the lack of adequate funds, and for giving due publicity to the work of the archæologists in the field. The results were most gratifying, for it was not long before explorers were investigating the mounds of Babylonia as well as those of Assyria.