"With Travels in Armenia, Kurdistan and the Desert: Being the Result of a Second Expedition Undertaken for the Trustees of the British Museum." 1 volume. First edition 1853. 'The binding is a three-dimensional representation of a colossal statue of a winged bull (lamassu), similar to the ones kept in the British Museum.' Publishers brown straight-grained cloth. Blind-stamped with gilt titled on spine. Original terracotta endpapers. xxiii, [1], 686 pages,[11]. 2 page publishers catalogue. Folding frontispiece plate. 4 folding plates and plans. 8 tinted lithographic plates. 1 lithographic plate of Assyrian script. 2 fold-out maps. Full-page illustrations. In-text wood-cuts. Sporadic foxing/spotting. Layard's discoveries, made on his first expedition to Mesopotamia during the years 1842-7 and described in his Nineveh and its Remains of 1849, met with popular acclaim back in Britain. In consequence, the British Museum funded a second expedition, of which Layard gives an account in the present work. This enabled Layard to return innumerable cuneiform documents from the 'King's Library' at the Kuyunijk Mound near Mosul, the eventual decipherment of which proved conclusively that ancient Nineveh had been located there. Shipped and insured [courier liability] by recorded delivery with UPS.