The Conquest of Assyria: Excavations in an Antique Land

by Mogens Trolle Larsen

The Conquest of Assyria tells what must surely be one of the most romantic tales of archaeological endeavour. The great cities and ancient palaces of Mesopotamia had lain buried for over two millenia, and were all but forgotten, half remembered in the Hebrew Bible and Classical texts. This volume records the dramatic finds, the decipherment of the cuneiform system of writing and the rediscovery of a lost civilisation.

Genres: Nonfiction, Archaeology, History

416 pages, Hardcover

First published October 16, 1996

Reviews

[Jessica Nilsson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I LOVE this book! If you have an interest in archaeology and it's past; how it was carried out during the 1800's in areas like Mesopotamia etc; connections to the British Museum; England and France during this time and other countries - this is the book to read. You get to read parts of letters between people and institutes (letters that make you feel like you're in the story; following emotions and actions by people), hear about how the cuneiform script got deciphered, read about assyriology, the excavations of amazing places like Numrud, Nineveh, Kuyunjik, the astonishing finds that were made there, and all the problems to get them from one place to another. Etc etc etc. Wonderful book! Last, but NOT least - actually the opposite - the main character (real person of course) of the book; Sir Austen Henry Layard, who has captured my interest and heart after reading this book. This interesting person is even called the real "Indiana Jones", and the first part of the book - where you get to follow his travels through the Orient - is fantastic in many ways; exciting and fun. It's a non-fiction, filled with facts, but if you have an interest in the subject or in history, I don't think you'll find it that "heavy". Sometimes it feels more like a "novel" in the way it's written. It took me some time to read through it, but it was more than worth it :)

[Glenn Frank · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this book up because of my interest in the early cultures of Sumeria, the Akadians, Assyrians and Babalon, and was interested in learning about the early discoveries and discoverers. The book has some great illustrations and photos, and tells of the early archeologists (more like treasure hunters) who found the lost civilizations, and began to decipher the strange cuneiform writings. It gets into the personalities of these men and their dangerous journeys as well as the personal, political, social, and religious forces that swayed their findings.

There were personal rivalries, political influences, social/religious pressures and both bigotry and acceptance of foreign cultures that this book gets deeply into. The beginning of the book seemed to be written with much more interesting insights and antidotes about these early archeologists which made the reading of their adventures a bit more engaging. toward the end it seemed the writing just started popping in more and more dry facts and quotes and comments that they had written down... making the reading a little less engaging. However, the book really does bring some sense of both the triumphs and the human frailty of the people involved in unearthing this lost history.

The book pulls no punches and shows these men's good and bad sides, their warts and their insights. I made the mistake of reading this as my night time reading... it is a bit dry for that I guess and it took me a long time to read through just reading at night. But in the end it was a very comprehensive history of these early discoverers and the world they lived in as they unearthed what had been long forgotten.