Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 3.djvu/169

 Matilda, sister of George Percy Badger [q. v. Suppl. I], the Arabic scholar, and became the first English consul at Mosul.

As an infant Hormuzd narrowly escaped death by the plague. In childhood he learned to write and speak both the Chaldean and Syrian language, which the native Christians used, and Arabic, the speech of health compelling his withdrawal. He the country. As a boy he was induced to serve as an acolyte in the Roman catholic church of St. Miskinta, but a project to send him to Rome to study the catholic faith came to nothing owing to his doubts of Roman doctrine. A brother Georges was excommunicated by the Roman church on that ground. Mrs. Badger, his brother's mother-in-law, finally converted him to protestantism and helped him in the study of English. In 1841 he accompanied an Austrian traveller on a scientific expedition to study the flora and fauna of the Assyrrian and Kurdish mountains. Next year he became clerk to his brother Christian. In the summer Sir Austen Henry Layard [q. v. Suppl. I], who passed through Mosul on his way from Persia to Constantinople, lodged at Christian's house and made Hormvizd's acquaintance, with crucial effect on his career.

With Christian's permission Layard took Hormuzd with him in 1845, to make excavations in the moimds of Nimroud, the site of the Biblical Calah. Hormuzd won Layard's fullest confidence, and when Layard went to Bagdad to arrange for the transport of the antiquities to England, Hormuzd was left in charge, and all the accounts of the excavations passed through his hands. His services, however, were unpaid. After the discovery at Nimroud of the palaces of Azur-nasir-apli, Shalmaneser II, Tiglath-pileser IV, Sennacherib, and Esarhaddon, work was pursued from May 1847 with equal success at Kouyunjik (Nineveh).

In 1848 by Layard's advice Rassam came to England with a view to finishing his education at Magdalen College, Oxford. He came to know Pusey and the leaders of the Oxford Movement, but his sympathy with them was small. His stay in Oxford was short. While Charles Marriott [q. v.] was preparing him for matriculation, Layard recalled him to Assyria to assist in excavations at the expense of the trustees of the British Museum. He subsequently presented to Magdalen College a sculptured slab from Nineveh. Rassam had now a fixed salary, with an allowance for travelling. Arriving late in 1849 he pushed on vigorously with the work at Kouyunjik, and the excavations at Nimroud were reopened. Rassam accompanied his patron to the ruins in Babylonia and returned to England in 1851, when Layard brought back his discoveries.

Next year the trustees of the British Museum sent Rassam out alone — Layard's worked at Nimroud, Kouyunjik, and tried again the mounds representing Assur, the old capital of Assyria, now called Qala'a-Shergat. In all these places antiquities were found, many of them of considerable importance. His great discovery on this occasion, however, was the palace of Assurbani-apli at Kouyunjik — the North Palace — with a beautiful series of bas-reliefs, including the celebrated hunting-scenes. Among the numerous tablets were some supplying accounts of the Creation and Flood legends. A few of the slabs found in this edifice are now in the Louvre at Paris, but most of them are in the British Museum.

On returning to England, Rassam in 1854 accepted from the Indian government the post of political interpreter at Aden, leaving further excavating work to William Kennett Loftus [q. v.]. At Aden, where Rassam remained eight years, he soon served as postmaster as well as political interpreter. Later he became judge and magistrate without salary, and was given the rank of political resident and justice of the peace. Rassam's chief duty was to qualify the hostility of the neighbouring tribes to the British authorities and to one another. Forming a friendship with Seyyid Alaidrous, whose ancestor he described as the patron saint of Arabia Felix, he got into touch with the tribes of the interior with the best results. In 1861 he was sent by the Indian government to Zanzibar to represent British interests while the claim of the Sultan of Muscat to suzerainty over his brother, the Sultan of Zanzibar, was under investigation by the Indian government.

In 1864 an exciting episode in Rassam's career opened. Two years earlier Theodore, King of Abyssinia, had cast into prison at Magdala, Consul Charles Duncan Cameron [q. v.], Henry Aaron Stern [q. v.], and other British missionaries of the London Jews' Society. In 1864 Rassam was chosen for the perilous duty of delivering a friendly letter of protest to Theodore. Arriving at Massowah, he and two companions. Lieutenant Prideaux and Dr. Blanc, of the Indian army, were kept waiting there nearly a year before receiving permission to enter the 