One need only point to the destruction caused to the archaeological sites of Iraq and Syria by Islamic State to see an example of the role heritage plays in the construction of identities, and of a past serving a contemporary agenda. Credit for the ‘discovery’ of the antiquities of Mesopotamia goes to Paul-Emile Botta (1802–1870), and Austen Henry Layard (1817–1894). Most British scholars had long considered the Mesopotamian antiquities to be inferior to Greco-Roman antiquities. Before the 1840’s, this group of upper-class critics had been the most important public of the British Museum. During the middle of the nineteenth-century, however, Layard’s Assyrian remains became both symbols of, and stakes in, a struggle for wider public access. Their rejection by the critics was contrasted with both historical and aesthetic admiration by the middle- and working classes. Simultaneously, the critics stood on one side of a developing rift between themselves and the archaeologists of a new discipline. In this article I analyse the appraisal of the Mesopotamian sculptures through a critical appraisal of the historiography and an analysis of the Layard Papers, in order to gain a better insight into the reception of the Assyrian antiquities in Victorian Great-Britain.

中文翻译：

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是“大美”的“多宝”，还是“粗制滥造”？奥斯汀·亨利·莱亚德、斯特拉特福·坎宁和亨利·罗林森对“尼尼微的遗骸”的评价

只需指出伊斯兰国对伊拉克和叙利亚考古遗址造成的破坏，就能看到遗产在身份建构中所起的作用以及为当代议程服务的过去的一个例子。美索不达米亚古物的“发现”归功于保罗-埃米尔·博塔（1802-1870 年）和奥斯汀·亨利·莱亚德（1817-1894 年）。大多数英国学者长期以来一直认为美索不达米亚古物不如希腊罗马古物。在1840年代之前，这群上流评论家是大英博物馆最重要的公众。然而，在 19 世纪中叶，莱亚德的亚述遗骸成为了争取更广泛公众参与的斗争的象征和赌注。他们遭到批评家的拒绝与中产阶级和工人阶级对历史和美学的钦佩形成鲜明对比。与此同时，批评家们站在他们与一门新学科考古学家之间不断发展的裂痕的一边。在这篇文章中，我通过对史学的批判性评价和对莱亚德论文的分析来分析美索不达米亚雕塑的评价，以更好地了解维多利亚时代英国对亚述古物的接受情况。