ABSTRACT
Place's cases were lying at Mosul for sixteen months, from 5 December 1853 until 29 April 1855, while he waited for a message from Paris telling him that a ship was being sent out to Basra. It must have been very hard for him to watch them every day, thinking about all the things he could have done at Khorsabad if money had been allocated to him. On the other hand he knew that his finds were magnificent and would overshadow what Botta had already brought home to the Louvre; he had packed many more reliefs, two gigantic bulls and other very large sculptures. A number of tablets and clay prisms with inscriptions had also been found, but these had been sent home with Félix Thomas who had already left, so the cases contained primarily large objects.
