Austen Henry Layard
British politician
Died when: 77 years 122 days (928 months)Star Sign: Pisces
Sir Austen Henry Layard GCB PC (/lɛərd/; 5 March 1817 – 5 July 1894) was an English Assyriologist, traveller, cuneiformist, art historian, draughtsman, collector, politician and diplomat.
He was born to a mostly English family in Paris and largely raised in Italy.He is best known as the excavator of Nimrud and of Nineveh, where he uncovered a large proportion of the Assyrian palace reliefs known, and in 1851 the library of Ashurbanipal.
Most of his finds are now in the British Museum.He made a large amount of money from his best-selling accounts of his excavations.
He had a political career between 1852, when he was elected as a Member of Parliament, and 1869, holding various junior ministerial positions.
He was then made ambassador to Madrid, then Constantinople, living much of the time in a palazzo he bought in Venice.
During this period he built up a significant collection of paintings, which he bequeathed to the National Gallery (as the Layard Bequest) and other museums.
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