Hormuzd Rassam

Hormuzd Rassam (* 1826 in Mosul, † September 16, 1910 in Hove ) was an Assyriologist and traveler who made ​​a number of important discoveries. These included, inter alia, the clay tablets of the Epic of Gilgamesh.

Biography

Rassam was ethnic Syrians, and was born in Mosul, Ottoman Empire as the Chaldean Catholic in a mixed cultural milieu. His father Anton Rassam came from Mosul and was archdeacon in the Assyrian Church of the East. His mother Theresa was the daughter of Ishaak Halabee from Aleppo ( Syria).

At the age of 20, he was recruited by the British archaeologist Austen Henry Layard as purser on a nearby excavation site. Layard, who undertook his first expedition in Mosul (1845-1847), was impressed by the hard-working Rassam and took him under his wing. They remained friends throughout their lives. Layard Rassam offered the opportunity to travel to England to study at Oxford on ( Magdalen College), where it remained 18 months. Then he accompanied Layard on his second expedition to Iraq ( 1849-1851 ).

Layard then launched a political career, while Rassam field work further led 1852-1854 at Nimrud and Nineveh, where he made a number of important and independent discoveries. Among them were clay tablets, which were later of George Smith as the Epic of Gilgamesh, the oldest known example of written literature, deciphered.

Then Rassam returned to England and began with the help of his friend Layard a career in government with a post at the British Consulate in Aden. In 1866 broke out in Ethiopia an international crisis, were taken as British missionaries of Emperor Theodore II hostage. In the hope that the situation peacefully resolve, Rassam was sent as an ambassador with a message from Queen Victoria. However, he was also taken prisoner and held for a number of years until British and Indian troops under Robert Napier in the British Ethiopia expedition of 1868 the warlord and his army defeated. Rassam's reputation was damaged after that, because he was portrayed as weak and unfit in the negotiations with the warlord, which was caused in large part by the Victorian prejudices against " Orientals ".

As his political career was in ruins, Rassam continued his archaeological work continues. He was from the British Museum to Assyria, where he led important investigations, particularly in Nineveh. During the Russian-Turkish War he carried out a fact-finding mission on the situation of the Christian communities in Asia Minor and Armenia. His archaeological work attracted many important discovery and collection of valuable epigraphic evidence by itself. In 1879, he made ​​sure that a found at Tell Sheikh Hamad fragment of a stele of Adad - nirari III. came to the British Museum in London.

In 1882 Rassam lived mainly in Brighton, where he wrote about the Assyrian- Babylonian Exploration of Christian sects of the Middle East and contemporary religious controversy in England. He was a member 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 oldest literary work in the world. He also found the Cyrus cylinder of baked clay, which is regarded as the first declaration of human rights, adopted by Cyrus the Great in 539 BC and is attributed to the Persian conquest of Babylon. Rassam important discoveries found worldwide attention and the Royal Academy in Turin awarded him the Brazza price 12,000 francs for the years 1879-1882.

Rassam married the Englishwoman Anne Eliza Price, and was the father of seven children. His eldest daughter Theresa Rassam, born in 1871, was a professional singer. She sang with the D' Oyly Carte Opera Company.

Writings (selection )

• The British Mission to Theodore, King of Abyssinia (1869 )
• Asshur and the Land of Nimrod (1897 )