Hormuzd Rassam

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Hormuzd Rassam (1826 – 16 September 1910) was an Assyrian Assyriologist and traveller who made a number of important discoveries, including the stone tablets that contained the Epic of Gilgamesh, the worlds oldest literature.

[edit] Biography

An ethnic Assyrian, Rassam was born in Mosul, Ottoman empire as a Chaldean Catholic to mixed cultural situation.^[1] His father Anton Rassam was from Mosul and was archdeacon in the Assyrian Church of the East, his mother Theresa was daughter of Ishaak Halabee of Aleppo, Syria.^[2] When he was 20 years old, he was hired by A.H. Layard to work as a pay master. Layard was in Mosul on his first expedition (1845-1847) and he was impressed by the hard-working and honest Rassam and took him under his wing, they would remain friends for life. Laylard provided an opportunity for Rassam to go to England and study at Oxford (Magdalen College), where he stayed for 18 months before and again accompanied Layard in his second expedition to Iraq (1849–1851).

Layard then entered on a political career, and Rassam continued field work (1852–1854) at Nimrud and Kuyunjik where he made a number of important and independent discoveries, including clay tablets that would later be deciphered by George Smith to be the Epic of Gilgamesh, the worlds oldest written literature.

He then returned to England and, with the help of his friend Laylard, started a new career in politics, to a post in Yeman. After some time there, in 1866 an international crisis ensued in nearby Abyssinia when British missionaries were taken hostage by a mountain warlord. England decided to send Rassam as an ambasador with a message from Queen Victoria to resolve the situation peacefully. However he was taken prisoner and held for a number of years until English and Indian troops under Robert Napier in the 1868 Expedition to Abyssinia resolved the standoff by defeating the warlord and his army. Rassam's reputation was damaged because he was unfairly portrayed as weak and ineffectual in dealing with the warlord, in large part due to systemic Victorian prejudices against "Orientals".(Damrosch, 2007)[1]

His political career in ruins, from 1876 to 1882 he once again took up his old career as archaeologist was again in Assyria conducting important investigations, especially at Nineveh, and during the Russo-Turkish War he went on a mission of inquiry to report on the condition of the Christian communities of Asia Minor and Armenia. His archaeological work resulted in many important discoveries and the collection of valuable epigraphical evidence.

After 1882 Rassam lived mainly at Brighton, writing on Assyro-Babylonian exploration, on the Christian sects of the Near East, or on current religious controversy in England. He was fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, the Society of Biblical Archaeology, and the Victoria Institute.

One of his greatest discoveries were the clay tablets that contained the Epic of Gilgamesh, the worlds oldest literature. In addition baked-clay cylinders, which are considered to be the first bill of human rights, issued by Cyrus the Great in 539 BC, in which the Persian king refers to the capture of Babylon. Rassam's important discoveries attracted world-wide attention, and the Royal Academy of Sciences at Turin awarded him the Brazza prize of 12,000 fr. for the four years 1879-82.

His publications include: The British Mission to Theodore, King of Abyssinia, (1869) and Asshur and the Land of Nimrod (1897).

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

• Hormuzd Rassam Assyrian Archaeologist 1826-1910
• Works by Hormuzd Rassam at Google Books.
• David Damrosch (2006). The Buried Book. ISBN 0805080295 Chapters 3 and 4 are an essential revised biography of Raqssam's life.
• Mogens T Larsen (1997). The Conquest of Assyria. ISBN 041514356X.

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This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.