ABSTRACT
This chapter examines two orders of archaeological simulation in Victorian England: Frederick Charles Cooper's Diorama of Nineveh, which appeared in the Gothic Hall in 1851, and the plaster-cast "Nineveh Court" in the new Crystal Palace at Sydenham in 1854. In Simulations, archaeology epitomizes the tendency of science to separate objects of study from the cultural and economic discourses that actually make them worthy of study. The three-dimensional interactive court at Sydenham flushes out the two-dimensional and fragmentary nature of the diorama's representation of the artist's archaeological experience. Frederick Charles Cooper plays a minor but important role in the Victorian production of ancient Assyria. The British people are as much the objects and subjects of display as the bulls and lions. While the Nineveh Court shares certain interests about public education and edification with the British Museum, the Sydenham Assyria translates these concerns into the realm of popular culture.
