ABSTRACT
Layard and Mitford spent more than two weeks in Mosul. Of all the ruins they had seen en route — and they had seen many — the great mounds of Assyria made the strongest impression on Layard and he insisted on visiting as many of them as he could. ‘A deep mystery hangs over Assyria, Babylonia and Chaldaea’, he wrote to describe his first impression.
With these names are linked great nations and great cities dimly shadowed forth in history; mighty ruins in the midst of deserts, defying, by their very desolation and lack of definite form, the description of the traveller; the remnants of the mighty races still roving over the land; the fulfilling and fulfilment of prophecies; the plains to which the Jew and the Gentile alike look as the cradle of their race.
(Layard 1849, vol. I: 2–3)