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Definition:
French archaeologist Paul Emile Botta (son of an Italian historian, so sometimes referred to as an Italian) was a politician in Mosul in what is now modern Iraq when some workers stumbled on the site of Khorsabad; because he couldn't read the cuneiform tablets, he announced that he had found Nineveh, actually 15 miles to the south. Botta spent four years excavating at Khorsabad; after which he retired from archaeology. He was the first archaeologist to excavate an Assyrian palace; it just wasn't Nineveh.
Related Terms
• Khorsabad
• Assyria
History of Archaeology, Part II: A little bit of science
An article in a series about the history of archaeology.
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Paul Emile Botta [1807-1870]
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