Layard meaning!
Austen Henry Layard
Biography
Sir Austen Henry Layard was born in Paris on 5 March 1817 and spent many of his formative years in Italy. The Layard family returned to England in 1829.
Travels
After the death of his father in 1834, Layard entered the law firm of his uncle but was unable to settle into a legal career.
Instead, in 1839 Layard and a companion, Edward Mitford, set out for Sri Lanka (then Ceylon).
Nimrud reconstruction
They travelled together overland as far as Iran (then Persia), parting company on 20 August 1840.
Mitford carried on to Sri Lanka. Meanwhile Layard spent the next couple of years alternating between Baghdad and life among the Bakhtiari people, who live in the mountainous region which now forms the modern border between Iran and Iraq.
Archaeology
In 1842 Layard travelled to Istanbul (then Constantinople) and was engaged by Sir Stratford Canning, the British Ambassador to Turkey.
In 1845 Canning dispatched Layard to seek out the site of the ancient Assyrian city of Nineveh.