Epic of Gilgamesh
The "Epic of Gilgamesh" was discovered by Austen Henry Layard, Hormuzd Rassam, and W. K. Loftus in 1853. The central character of Gilgamesh was initially reintroduced to the world as ""Izdubar"", before the cuneiform logographs in his name could be pronounced accurately. The first modern translation was published in the early 1870s by George Smith. Smith then made further discoveries of texts on his later expeditions, which culminated in his final translation which is given in his book "The Chaldaean Account of Genesis" (1880).
Hormuzd Rassam
Layard left archeology to begin a political career. Rassam continued field work (1852–54) at Nimrud and Nineveh, where he made a number of important and independent discoveries. These included the clay tablets that would later be deciphered by George Smith as the "Epic of Gilgamesh", the world's oldest written narrative poem. The tablets' description of a flood myth written 1000 years prior to the earliest record of the Biblical story of Noah, caused much debate at the time about the Biblical narrative of ancient history.