Paul-Émile Botta

Paul-Émile Botta
Born	(1802-12-06)December 6, 1802 Turin, Italy
Died	March 29, 1870(1870-03-29) (aged 67) Achères
Nationality	France
Fields	archeology
Doctoral advisor	Henri Marie Ducrotay de Blainville

Paul-Émile Botta (6 December 1802 – 29 March 1870) was a French scientist who served as Consul in Mosul (then in the Ottoman Empire, now in Iraq) from 1842.

Life

He was born Paolo Emiliano Botta in Turin, Italy, on December 6, 1802. His father was Italian historian Carlo Giuseppe Guglielmo Botta (1766–1837). In 1820 they moved to Paris where he studied under Henri Marie Ducrotay de Blainville.^[1]

Voyage around the world

Botta was selected to be naturalist on a voyage around the world. Although he had no formal medical training, he also served as the ship surgeon. Le Heros under Captain Auguste Bernard Duhaut-Cilly (1790–1849) left Le Havre April 8, 1826 and sailed south through the Atlantic Ocean, stopping in Rio de Janeiro and around Cape Horn. They traveled up the coast stopping at Callao, Mexico, and Alta California. Jean Baptiste Rives (1793–1833), the former secretary of the Kingdom of Hawaii, had convinced investors from the family of Jacques Laffitte to finance the voyage to promote trade to California and Hawaii, but Rives disappeared along with some of the cargo.^[2] After visiting the Hawaiian Islands they reached China on December 27, 1828. In late July, 1829, the Heros returned to Le Havre.^[1]

On January 5, 1830 he defended his doctor's thesis. In 1831 he sailed to Cairo where he met Benjamin Disraeli. Some historians think the French traveler Marigny in Disraeli's novel Contarini Fleming was based on Botta.^[1] In 1836 Botta was sent to Yemen to collect plants on behalf of the Paris Natural History Museum.

Middle East

The credit of beginning archaeological research at Kuyunjik belongs to Botta, whom the French Government appointed Consul at Mosul in 1841-2. Before he left Paris to take up his duties he had several interviews with Julius Mohl, the eminent Orientalist, who pointed out to him that Mosul was the centre of a district of great historical and archaeological importance, and urged him to make good use of the splendid opportunity which he would enjoy for collecting antiquities, and even for making excavations on his own account. Mohl had read Claudius Rich's works, and realized clearly that the author had found the exact site of the ruins of Nineveh, and he felt that priceless archaeological treasures lay buried there and it was said that Botta's appointment as Consul at Mosul was due entirely to the influence and activity of Mohl, who persuaded the Government and the learned Societies of Paris that a French Consul at Mosul could do what a British Consul at Baghdad had done, i.e., make large collections of Oriental manuscripts, cuneiform tablets, etc.

Botta arrived in Mosul early in 1842, and tried to collect antiquities, but there was very little to be had, and Botta himself laments that Rich had swept up and carried off everything. He then turned his attention to excavating, and was anxious to make his first attempt at Nabi Yunus, where Rich had seen so much ancient building and sculpture, and acquired so many antiquities. But the Pasha of Mosul and the authorities of the Mosque of Jonah would not allow any part of that mound to be disturbed.

Botta decided to begin work at Kuyunjik. He started digging in December, 1842, and worked steadily for six weeks, but the results he obtained were few, and besides inscribed bricks and some small and unimportant objects, he found nothing. He carried on his excavations at his own expense, and as his means were small he began to wonder if it were worth while continuing the work. Whilst his men were digging they were watched by many people from the town and country round about, and they all wondered at the care with which every brick and fragment of alabaster were set aside to be kept. One day, when Botta was examining a number of such fragments, a Christian from the village of Khorsabad, by trade a dyer, asked him why he preserved such things. When the dyer heard that he was digging for alabaster slabs with figures sculptured upon them, he told Botta that he ought to come to his village, where they frequently dug up such things.

In no very hopeful spirit Botta sent two or three men to dig at Khorsabad on March 20, 1843, and three days later they came upon the top of a wall, one side of which was covered with sculptured alabaster bas-reliefs. A week's work showed Botta that he had discovered the remains of a huge Assyrian palace, containing a large number of chambers and corridors, all the walls of which were lined with slabs bearing sculptured representations of gods and kings, and battles, and religious ceremonies. Side by side with these representations were long inscriptions in the cuneiform character. Botta wrote: "What can all this mean? Who built this structure? In what century did he live? To what nation did he belong? Are these walls telling me their tales of joy and woe? Is this beautiful cuneiformed character a language? I know not. I can read their glory and their victories in their figures, but their story, their age, their blood, is to me a mystery. Their remains mark the fall of a glorious and a brilliant past, but of a past known not to a living man."

Botta sent despatch after despatch to his patron Mohl, and, thinking that he had discovered Nineveh, he announced to him that "Ninive est retrouvé". It was not Nineveh that he had discovered, but the palace of Sargon II, King of Assyria, B.C. 721-705. The French government, highly gratified at the surprising success of its consul, supplied him with ample means for further research as well as the artist Eugène Flandin to document Botta's discoveries. In 1845, having completely cleared out Khorsabad, he returned to France with a magnificent collection of Assyrian sculptures and cuneiform inscriptions. The Louvre's Assyrian display opened to the public in the presence of King Louis-Philippe on May 1, 1847. Botta's discoveries aroused the whole archaeological and historical world with enthusiasm. A tremendous impulse was given to the study of the Orient. Due to the French Revolution in 1848 Botta could not much profit of his fame. In 1846 he became French consul in Jerusalem and from 1857–1868 consul in Tripoli. Due to his bad health he returned to France. He died on April 17, 1870 in Achères near Poissy.

In 1855, Victor Place, Botta's successor tried to send finds from Kish, Khorsabad, Nimrud and from Assurbanipal's palace in Niniveh, 235 cases all in all, from Mosul down the Tigris and the Shatt al-Arab to Basra, where they were to be loaded on a ship bound to Paris. One barge and four rafts were used, the rafts transported two human headed winged bulls and two winged Genii as well as other works of art. All the vessels were overloaded, and during the journey they were attacked several times by "Arab pirates". On March 21 or March 23, after passing the toll station at Zejeyyak (Zecheiya), the barge was rammed by pirates and sunk, "one and a half hours downriver from Al-Qurna", on the left bank of the river.

One raft, laden with a winged bull, later sank in the middle of the Shatt al-Arab near Kout el Fiengoui. Only two rafts reached Basra. The finds which were brought to Europe are in the Louvre and the British Museum today.

Several attempts to recover the boats during 1855 failed. Among the lost artifacts is, for example, the famous relief depicting the sack of the Urartian town of Musasir during Sargons's 8th campaign. The palace of Sargon II, near to sites explored by Botta and Place, would later be excavated by Edward Chiera during 1928 - 1929.

Work in other fields

Botta was also a naturalist. He collected mammals, birds, reptiles and insects in California in the 1820s and 1830s as well as in Mesopotamia. The rubber boa (Charina bottae), a Western United States endemic, is named in his honor.

Botta's pocket gopher described by Joseph Fortuné Théodore Eydoux and Paul Gervais commemorates his name.

Botta died in Achères, France on March 29, 1870.

References

Further reading

• Paul-Émile Botta and M. E. Flandin, Les Monuments de Ninive (Paris 1849-1859)
• Glyn Daniel, A short history of archaeology (London, Thames and Hudson 1981).
• Maurice Pillet, Khorsabad. Les découvertes de V. Place en Assyrie, (Paris 1918).
• Paul-Émile Botta (October–December 1831). "Observations sur les habitants des îles Sandwich". Nouvelles Annales des Voyages et des Sciences Geographiques 52. pp. 129–148.  (French)
• Charles Franklin Carter (1930). "Duhaut-Cilly's Account of California in the Years 1827-28". California History Magazine 8 (2 and 3) (California Historical Society). pp. 8–130 to 8–166 and 8–215 to 8–250.  (translation of French)

External links

• Botta in the Louvre
• Khorsabad
• "Façade m. Taureau (porte k, 1), de face. (1849)". Digital image gallery web site. New York Public Library. Retrieved May 9, 2010. 
•  "Botta, Carlo Giuseppe Guglielmo". The American Cyclopædia. 1879.