Hormuzd Rassam

Hormuzd Rassam (1826 – 16 September 1910) (Syriac: ܗܪܡܙܕ ܪܣܐܡ‎), was a Chaldean Mesopotamian archeologist who made a number of important discoveries from 1877 to 1882, including the clay tablets that contained the Epic of Gilgamesh, the world's oldest literature. He is accepted as the first-known Chaldeans, Ottoman and Middle Eastern archaeologist. He was known to be Christian. Later in life, he emigrated to the United Kingdom, where he was naturalized as a British citizen, settling in Brighton. He represented the government as a diplomat, helping to free British diplomats from captivity in Ethiopia.

Hormuzd Rassam was an indigenous Chaldean born in Mosul in Upper Mesopotamia (now modern northern Iraq), then part of the Ottoman Empire. His parents were Christians, members of the Chaldean Catholic Church. His father, Anton Rassam, was from Mosul, and was archdeacon in the Assyrian Church of the East; his mother Theresa was a daughter of Isaak Halabee of Aleppo, also then within the Ottoman Empire. Hormuzd's brother was British Vice-Consul in Mosul, which was how he obtained his start with Layard.

At the age of 20 in 1846, Rassam was hired by British archaeologist Austen Henry Layard as a pay master at Nimrud, a nearby Assyrian excavation site. Layard, who was in Mosul on his first expedition (1845–47), was impressed by the hard-working Rassam and took him under his wing; they would remain friends for life. Layard provided an opportunity for Rassam to travel to England and study at Magdalen College, Oxford. He studied there for 18 months before accompanying Layard on his second expedition to Iraq (1849–51).

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