Loftus was brought up in
Rye,
East Sussex, and went to school at
Newcastle Royal Grammar School. In Cambridge, where from 1840 he studied geology, he was a student at
Caius College. In 1845 he married Charlotte Thulbourne. From 1849 he served as geologist and naturalist with the British government's
Turco-Persian Boundary Commission, under
Colonel Fenwick Williams (Royal Artillery). The work of the mission gave Loftus and his friend
Henry Adrian Churchill the chance to visit ancient sites and, in 1850, to excavate for a month at Uruk (Warka) and
Larsa (Senkereh), discovering the
Ziggurat of Ur. Loftus and Churchill also visited
Susa in 1850, but they only made plans of the site, and
Percy Sykes described the pair's reception at Susa as "unfriendly". Briefly, in February to April 1851, Loftus was released from the work of the commission to excavate at Susa on behalf of the
British Museum, but was in June replaced by
Hormuzd Rassam, together with whom Loftus subsequently explored the sites and collaborated on a report on the work at Susa. He is credited with the discovery of the
Apadana, later excavated by the French amateur archaeologist
Marcel-Auguste Dieulafoy. Engaged in 1853 by the newly founded Assyrian Excavation Fund to conduct excavations in Warka, Loftus worked at the site from January to April 1854, uncovering the famous coloured clay cone wall and some tablets written in
cuneiform script. In October of the same year he transferred to
Nineveh, and also worked at
Nimrud, where in February 1855 he found the so-called "Burnt Palace" of the Assyrian king
Assurnasirpal II and a hoard of exquisite ivories. In 1854 he briefly excavated at
Tell Sifr. In September 1856 Loftus was engaged as assistant geologist to the
Geological Survey of India, but in India he suffered declining health and died at sea on the voyage back to Britain, aged 38. ==Works==