Austen Henry Layard and Archibald Henry Sayce. An Anatolian Perspective

Alaura S.

Anatolian Studies  Austen Henry Layard  Archibald Henry Sayce  Victorian England  Oxford archives 

One of the less well-known and less studied aspects of the multifaceted life and career of Austen Henry Layard (1817-1894) is undoubtedly his role in the history of the pre-classical archaeology of Anatolia, which primarily dates back to the period when he was ambassador at Constantinople. This is documented by his contacts with the Anglican clergyman Archibald Henry Sayce (1845-1933), Professor of Comparative Philology, and later of Assyriology, at Oxford. My paper focuses on the correspondence between Layard and Sayce in the years 1879-1880 and on other unpublished documents preserved in archives in Oxford and London. Further information concerning this formative phase of Anatolian studies can be obtained from the letters - also unpublished - that both Layard and Sayce exchanged in the same period with the German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann (1822-1890), already well-known for his excavations at Hisarlik-Troy and Mycenae.

Source: Rethinking Layard 1817-2017, pp. 25–61, Venezia, Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere e Arti, 5-6/03/2018