Using his skill as a painter, Layard attempted to reconstruct imaginatively on paper some of the extensive ruins of a palace he had excavated at Nimrud. Here can be seen the strange man-headed winged bulls in position. This image is now known to represent the principal ceremonial room in the palace of King Ashurnasipal II in the ninth century BC. This watercolour was reproduced as a lithograph in his book The Monuments of Nineveh in 1849. Some details of the reconstruction are inaccurate, yet as a whole it gives a vivid idea of the splendour and might of the Kingdom of Assyria, as described in the Bible.

Indeed, Layard’s discoveries which confirmed some of the Biblical accounts of Assyria, not least the destruction of Nineveh and Babylon, caused great enthusiasm among Christians in Britain and America. The finding of the remains of this great pre-classical civilisation also inspired poets and artists. For example, Dante Gabriel Rossetti wrote his poem “The Burden of Nineveh" in 1856 after a visit to the British Museum to see the winged bulls. Also in 1856, the Great Exhibition building was moved to Sydenham in South London. It now included amongst its architectural displays an `Assyrian Court’ in which reproductions, including full-scale winged bulls appropriately painted, had been constructed, using Layard as an advisor.