Treasure Seekers: Edge of the Orient

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It was the birthplace of civilization,

now a barren and exotic landscape,

alluring in its mystery.

For thousands of years,

the Middle East

had guarded its secrets.

But by the 19th century

it had become a battleground

for competing empires

eager for political control

and archeological treasure.

It was a time when archeology

was intertwined with espionage.

When politics was called

"The Great Game".

Into this arena stepped

two remarkable Britons

a young adventurer named

Austin Henry Layard,

who uncovered the treasures of

a fabulous lost civilization,

and a brilliant politician

named Gertrude Bell,

the "brains" behind

Lawrence of Arabia.

Both would follow their dreams into

the desert

changing it forever.

In the spring of 1840,

an intrepid young Englishman found

his way to the ancient land

between the Tigris and

Euphrates Rivers, now part of Iraq.

He was on his way towards India

to make his fortune.

But there was something about

this desert that caught hold of him

and wouldn't let him go.

More than 2,000 years ago,

two mighty empires had ruled

this land:
Babylonia and Assyria.

Their cities were fabled

for their opulence.

Their power rivaled

only by each other.

The Assyrians were

fearsome warriors.

Eight centuries before Christ,

they had marched on the Israelites.

City after city fell before them.

Even Jerusalem was under siege.

Thousands of captives were taken,

immortalized as the

Ten Lost Tribes of Israel.

And all this was written

in the Bible.

But now almost all traces of these

great civilizations had disappeared.

There was nothing here but desert

as far as the eye could see.

Yet in this wasteland, Austin Henry

Layard saw the chance

of a lifetime.

In the decade to come,

he would uncover the secrets

of this barren desert,

and reveal the truth

in a Bible story.

When he saw the mounds and saw

this area, he saw opportunity.

He saw opportunity for fame,

and he was looking as a way

to make his name and his life.

From his earliest childhood,

Austin Henry Layard was

an unusual young man.

Most of his youth was spent

in Florence

where he fell in love with

that ancient city's history and art.

Formal schooling was not for him,

but he knew almost every painting in

the galleries and

churches of the city.

The rest of his time he spent

dreaming, lost in stories of adventure.

His favorite was a book only recently

translated into English.

The work in which I took the

greatest delight was the Arabian Nights.

My imagination became

so much excited by it,

that I thought and dreamt of

little else.

The Arabian Nights have had no little

influence upon my life and career.

To them, I attribute that love of

travel and adventure,

which took me to the East.

Ever since Napoleon rediscovered

the wonders of Egypt

at the turn of the century,

Europeans had been captivated by

the exoticism of the East.

From the time he was a boy,

Austin Henry Layard

fell under its spell.

His family tried to make

a lawyer of him.

Layard hated the law, but he stuck it

out and passed his exams at 22.

Casting about, he learned of a

possible job in Ceylon,

a British colony

halfway around the world.

It was the chance

he had been waiting for.

Layard found another traveler

to accompany him

in the overland route

through the Ottoman Empire.

In 1839, this was a journey

well off the beaten track,

which could take more than a year.

The two men wore Turkish dress

to assure safe passage,

and lived out of their saddlebags.

They made their way down into Turkey,

the gateway to another world.

This was my first glimpse

of Eastern life.

The booths in the covered alleys

of the bazaar;

the veiled women gliding

through the crowd;

the dim and mysterious light

of the place.

I felt myself in a new world,

a world of which I had dreamt

since my earliest childhood.

When Austin Henry Layard

reached the desert,

he was living

his deepest fantasy.

You know how sometimes you go to

a place, and it is you,

and you just fit,

and you feel comfortable?

I don't think Layard,

at that stage in his life,

was comfortable in

Victorian England.

But when he got to Petra,

in particular, where he was robbed

and had a terrible time,

he felt at home

because he felt a kinship

with these people

who were very volatile and friendly

and outgoing like he was.

Petra also satisfied Layard's

fascination with history.

The city's fading grandeur

carved from solid rock.

But there were other

even more ancient ruins,

and these proved

more intriguing still.

One day on his way through

the Tigris and Euphrates valley,

he caught sight of

something extraordinary

rising out of the flat desert plain.

I saw for the first time the great

Mound of Nimrud against

the clear sky.

The impression it made upon me was

one never to be forgotten.

Layard vowed that

some day he would return

to investigate the mysterious mound.

In the meantime,

the romantic young Englishman

lost all interest

in continuing on to Ceylon.

For a year, he lived with

the Baktiari nomads in Persia,

whose way of life had not changed

for 3,000 years.

And it was I think one reason

he became the archeologist he did.

He learned how to

improvise on the spot;

he learned how to

adjust circumstances,

how to live in discomfort;

and above all,

how to interact with these people.

His meager funds now growing short,

the enterprising Layard used his

facility with different cultures

to get a job with the British

ambassador to the Ottoman Empire.

For three years,

he served as a kind of roving reporter.

He was really a secret agent.

A lot of his work was very sensitive,

and negotiating with

these sorts of people.

And the skills he gained

were priceless,

but it is only a certain sort of

person who will gain those skills.

Very outgoing, very entrepreneurial,

in a way.

Never at a loss.

That's where Layard was brilliant.

Layard's new skills were just

the right mix for his next assignment.

A new kind of conflict was

heating up in the Middle East.

Ever since Napoleon had brought back

treasures from Egypt,

the great powers had been on the

lookout for archeological booty.

The idea of museums,

temples of the muses,

was one which was capturing the

imagination of 19th century Europeans.

The British, the French, the Germans

were all building these palaces

in which to place... well,

what are they going to place there?

Like Layard, the French recognized

the potential of the strange mounds

rising out of

the Middle Eastern desert.

Now they had begun to dig,

and at Khorsabad they were uncovering

some very interesting sculptures.

There was certainly a competition

between the French and the British

as to who could find

the biggest treasures

in order to stock the museums

in Paris and London.

And, in fact, newspaper articles

and magazines at that time

actually described these finds

as "Trophies of empire."

To catch up with the French,

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