ABSTRACT
W e know now that Botta had uncovered not Nineveh but Assyrian KingSargon’s palace, constructed at great expense in the eighth century B.C. 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.
