Volume 1

Nineveh and its remains: with an account of a visit to the Chaldaean Christians of Kurdistan, and the Yezidis, or devil-worshippers; and an enquiry into the manners and arts of the ancient Assyrians / by Austen Henry Layard.

  • Layard, Austen Henry, 1817-1894.
Date:
1854
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Nineveh and its remains: with an account of a visit to the Chaldaean Christians of Kurdistan, and the Yezidis, or devil-worshippers; and an enquiry into the manners and arts of the ancient Assyrians / by Austen Henry Layard. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    people into the temple of their gods ? What more sublime images could have been borrowed from nature, by men who sought, unaided by the light of revealed religion, to embody their conception of the wisdom, power, and ubiquity of a Supreme Being ? They could find no better type of intellect and knowledge than the head of the man; of strength, than the body of the lion ; of ubiquity, than the wings of the bird. These winged human- headed lions were not idle creations, the otFspring of mere fancy ; their meaning was written upon them. They had awed and instructed races which flourished 3000 years ago. Through the portals which they guarded, kings, priests, and warriors had borne sacrifices to their altars, long before the wisdom of the East had penetrated to Greece, and had furnished its mythology with symbols long recognised by the As- syrian votaries. They may have been buried, and their existence may have been unknown, before the found- ation of the eternal city. For twenty-five centuries they had been hidden from the eye of man, and they now stood forth once more in their ancient majesty. But how changed was the scene around them! The luxury and civilisation of a mighty nation had given place to the wretchedness and ignorance of a few half-barbarous tribes. The wealth of temples, and the riches of great cities, had been succeeded by ruins and shapeless heaps of earth. Above the spacious hall in which they stood, the plough had passed and the corn now waved. Egypt has monuments no less ancient and no less wonderful; but tliey have stood