The Great Ruins of Nineveh

Victorian archaeologist austin henry layard visited the ruins of nineveh in 18 fifties. Laard was struck with the haunting beauty of these empty places where the ruins hardly even seemed to bear the marks of human construction. Were the traveller to cross the euphrates and seek for such ruins in mesopotamia as he had left ind him in asia minor or syria, his search would be in vain. All are replaced by a stern, shapeless mound rising like a hill from the scorched plain,. The fragments of pottery and the stupendous mass of brickwork, occasionally laid bare by the winter rains.