This volume is a collection of 100 prints published by Sir Austen Henry Layard in 1849 following the excavation of the palace of the Assyrian King, Ashurnasirpal II (883-859 BC) at Nineveh (near Mosul). It contains prints and engravings of the many bas-reliefs and other finds made at the site, each with an interpretation of its content. The volume was published in order to illustrate Layard's other contemporary work Nineveh and its Remains (see RCINs 1077011-2).
Layard also published another folio work in addition to this volume (see RCIN 1071069) covering the subsequent discovery of the Library of Ashurbanipal, a vast collection of cuneiform tablets, uncovered at Nineveh in 1853.

While Layard and other members of his team received praise and were rewarded for their finds, much of the work carried out at Nineveh was undertaken by local workmen, of whom often very little is known. However, one of his team, Hormuzd Rassam, paymaster of the 1849 expedition, befriended Layard and became recognised internationally for his field work at Nineveh, which included the discovery of the Epic of Gilgamesh among the tablets found in 1853 as well as the Rassam cylinder, a ten-sided cylinder documenting the military campaigns of Ashurbanipal. Rassam led four further expeditions in the Middle East for the British Museum between 1877 and 1882. He also served as a diplomat for the British government, travelling to Ethiopia in 1866 to negotiate the release of British citizens taken captive by the Ethiopian emperor Tewodros II (see RCINs 1026103-4).

The majority of the artefacts discovered at Nineveh by Layard are now held at the British Museum, who came to sponsor his expeditions, with smaller collections at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and various international institutions. Excavations at Nineveh have continued since Layard's first expedition to the site. Initially undertaken by British archaeologists, since the mid-twentieth century, Iraqi archaeologists have taken control of the site.