ABSTRACT
We know now that Botta had uncovered not Nineveh but Assyrian King Sargon’s palace, constructed at great expense in the eighth century BC. Even so, Botta’s remarkable discoveries ushered in a classical era of nineteenth-century archaeology-which revealed to an astonished world not only the Assyrians but, in addition, the Sumerians, the Maya, the Minoans, the Mycenaeans, and other hitherto unknown civilizations.
