Hormuzd Rassam

Hormuzd Rassam was an Assyriologist and author who made a number of important archaeological discoveries from 1877 to 1882, including the clay tablets that contained the Epic of Gilgamesh, the world's oldest notable literature. He was born in Mosul, Iraq in 1826 to Assyrian parents and studied at the University of Oxford. He first served as an assistant to the British archaeologist Austen Henry Layard and participated in the excavation of Nimrud and Nineveh. He later became the curator of the British Museum and supervised several Mesopotamian excavations. He found a pair of bronze gates at Tell Balawat, a tablet of King Nabu-apal-iddin at Sippar, and thousands of cuneiform tablets and inscriptions. He also translated the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Laws of Eshnunna into Arabic and published many books and articles on Mesopotamian language and culture. He died in 1910 in Brighton, England. He is considered one of the pioneers of Assyriology and one of the first Middle Eastern archaeologists.