William Kennett Loftus (13 November 1820,

Linton, Kent Linton is a village and civil parish in the Maidstone District of Kent, England. The parish is located on the southward slope of the Greensand ridge, south of Maidstone on the A229 Hastings Hastings () is a large seaside town and Borough ...

– 27 November 1858, at sea) was a British geologist, naturalist, explorer and archaeological excavator. He discovered the ancient Sumerian city of

Uruk Uruk, also known as Warka or Warkah, was an ancient city of Sumer (and later of Babylonia) situated east of the present bed of the Euphrates River on the dried-up ancient channel of the Euphrates east of modern Samawah, Al-Muthannā, Iraq.Harm ...

in 1849.

Biography

Loftus was brought up in

Rye Rye (''Secale cereale'') is a grass grown extensively as a grain, a cover crop and a forage crop. It is a member of the wheat tribe (Triticeae) and is closely related to both wheat (''Triticum'') and barley (genus ''Hordeum''). Rye grain is u ...

, East Sussex, and went to school at

Newcastle Royal Grammar School (By Learning, You Will Lead) , established = , closed = , type = Grammar SchoolIndependent school (UK), Independent day school , religion = , president = , head_label = Headmaster , head = Geoffrey Stanford , r_head_label = , r_head ...

. In Cambridge, where from 1840 he studied geology, he was a resident of

Caius College Gonville and Caius College, often referred to simply as Caius ( ), is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1348, it is the fourth-oldest of the University of Cambridge's 31 colleges and one of t ...

. In 1845 he married Charlotte Thulbourne. From 1849 he served as geologist and naturalist with the British government's Turco-Persian Boundary Commission, under Colonel Fenwick Williams (Royal Artillery). The work of the mission gave Loftus and his friend Henry Adrian Churchill the chance to visit ancient sites and, in 1850, to excavate for a month at Uruk (Warka) and Larsa (Senkereh), discovering the Ziggurat of Ur. Briefly, in February to April 1851, Loftus was released from the work of the commission to excavate at Susa on behalf of the

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It documen ...

, but was in June replaced by

Hormuzd Rassam Hormuzd Rassam ( ar, هرمز رسام; syr, ܗܪܡܙܕ ܪܣܐܡ; 182616 September 1910), was an Assyriologist and author. He is known for making a number of important archaeological discoveries from 1877 to 1882, including the clay tablets tha ...

, together with whom Loftus subsequently explored the sites and collaborated on a report on the work at Susa. He is credited with the discovery of the

Apadana Apadana ( peo, 𐎠𐎱𐎭𐎠𐎴) is a large hypostyle hall in Persepolis, Iran. It belongs to the oldest building phase of the city of Persepolis, in the first half of the 6th century BC, as part of the original design by Darius the Gr ...

, later excavated by the French amateur archaeologist Marcel-Auguste Dieulafoy. Engaged in 1853 by the newly founded Assyrian Excavation Fund to conduct excavations in Warka, Loftus worked at the site from January to April 1854, uncovering the famous coloured clay cone wall and some tablets written in cuneiform script. In October of the same year he transferred to Nineveh, and also worked at

Nimrud Nimrud (; syr, ܢܢܡܪܕ ar, النمرود) is an ancient Assyrian city located in Iraq, south of the city of Mosul, and south of the village of Selamiyah ( ar, السلامية), in the Nineveh Plains in Upper Mesopotamia. It was a m ...

, where in February 1855 he found the so-called "Burnt Palace" of the Assyrian king

Assurnasirpal II Ashur-nasir-pal II (transliteration: ''Aššur-nāṣir-apli'', meaning " Ashur is guardian of the heir") was king of Assyria from 883 to 859 BC. Ashurnasirpal II succeeded his father, Tukulti-Ninurta II, in 883 BC. During his reign he embarke ...

and a hoard of exquisite ivories. In 1854 be briefly excavated at Tell Sifr. In September 1856 Loftus was engaged as assistant geologist to the Geological Survey of India, but in India he suffered declining health and died at sea on the voyage back to Britain, aged 38.

Works

''Travels and Researches in Chaldaea and Susiana in 1849-52''
(1857) *''Reports of the Assyrian Excavation Fund I and II'', published in R.D. Barnett, ''Sculptures from the North Palace of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh (668-627 B.C.)'' (1976)

References

External links

* 1820 births 1858 deaths English explorers English archaeologists English Assyriologists People educated at the Royal Grammar School, Newcastle upon Tyne People from Rye, East Sussex Employees of the British Museum Victorian writers 19th-century English writers 19th-century archaeologists Uruk {{UK-archaeologist-stub Assyriologists