Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 3.djvu/170

 country, which even then was only granted in response to Rassam's threat to return to Aden. Rassam met Theodore at Damot on 28 Jan. 1866. At first the mission was well treated; the captives were set at liberty and reached Rassam's camp, while a letter of apology from the king was drafted (12 March 1866). Suddenly the king's conduct changed; he imposed fresh conditions (12 April) and claimed an indemnity for the liberation of the captives. Having re-arrested the prisoners, Theodore now seized the three members of the British mission and threw all, loaded with chains, into the rock-fortress of Magdala.

Rassam, whose personal relations with Theodore were not unamiable, succeeded in communicating with the frontier, and a military expedition was despatched to Abyssinia to effect the release of the captives, under Sir Robert Napier (afterwards Lord Napier of Magdala). On 2 Dec. 1867 Theodore heard of its landing. An ultimatum from the commander-in-chief destined for the king was intercepted by Rassam, who believed its receipt would lead to the massacre of himself and of his fellow-captives. Recognising his peril, Theodore ordered Rassam's chains to be taken off on 18 March 1868, and he and the three captives were released on the arrival of the British force before Magdala on 11 April 1868. Until his death Rassam suffered physically from his long confinement. On the 14th the fortress was taken by storm, and Theodore died by his own hand next day. Rassam narrated his strange experiences in his 'British Mission to Theodore, King of Abyssinia, with Notices of the Country traversed from Massowah through the Soudan and the Amhara and back to Annesley Bay from Magdala (2 vols. 1869).

Returning to England, Rassam during a year's leave of absence married an English wife, and resigning his appointment at Aden travelled widely in the United Kingdom and the Near East. He then settled first at Twickenham and afterwards at Isleworth. In 1877 he was again employed by the British government in Asiatic Turkey, where he inquired into the condition of the Christian communities and sects in Asia Minor, Armenia, and Kurdistan. He revisited his native town of Mosul on 16 Nov. 1877. He gave a detailed account of his observations on the journey in his 'Asshur and the Land of Nimrod' (Cincinnati and New York, 1897).

Meanwhile, in 1876, with the help of Layard, then British ambassador in Turkey, Rassam had obtained a firman from the Turkish government, on behalf of the trustees of the British Museum, for the continuation of the excavations in Assyria and Babylonia. He at once organised the work of exploration, and every year from 1876 until the end of 1882 he carried on excavations, not only at Kouyunjik (Nineveh) and Nimroud (Calah) but also at Balawat. In Babylonia the sites explored included the ruins of Babylon, Tel-Ibrahim (Cuthah), Dailem, and Abu-Habbah (Sippar). Among the more important finds were the bronze gates of the Assyrian king Shalmaneser II (Balawat), the beautiful Sungod-stone, the cylinder of Nabonidus giving his date for the early Babylonian kings Sargon of Agade and his son Naram-Sin, and a valuable mace-head with the name of king Sargani. The inscriptions included additions to the Creation and Flood legends, the first tablet of a bilingual series prefaced by a new and important version of the Creation story in Sumerian and Semitic Babylonian, and numerous other documents; the fragments, large and small, amounted, it was estimated, to close upon 100,000, though many of these were small, and consequently of little value. Among the imperfect documents was the cylinder of Cyrus the Great, in which he refers to the capture of Babylon. Rassam's important discoveries attracted world-wide attention, and the Royal Academy of Sciences at Turin awarded him the Brazza prize of 12,000 fr. for the four years 1879-82. His discovery of the site of the city Sippara is especially noticed among the grounds of the award. An allegation that Rassam's kinsmen had withheld from the British Museum the best of Rassam's finds was successfully refuted in 1893 in an action at law in which Rassam was awarded 50l. damages for libel.

After 1882 Rassam lived mainly at Brighton, writing on Assyro-Babylonian exploration, on the Christian sects of the Nearer East, or on current religious controversy in England. Like most Oriental Christians, he was a man of strong religious convictions, and having adopted evangelical views became a bitter foe of the high church movement. He was fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, the Society of Biblical Archaeology, and the Victoria Institute.

An autobiography which he compiled before his death remains in manuscript. He died at his residence at Hove, Brighton, on 16 Sept. 1910, and was buried in the