ady squared
were brought down the affluents of the Tigris on rafts or in boats, and
thus arrived at their destination without land transport.

[Illustration: 236.jpg RARE ANIMALS BROUGHT BACK AS TROPHIES BY THE
KING]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the cast in the Louvre. The
original is in the British Museum.

The kings of Assyria, like the Pharaohs, had always had a passion for
rare trees and strange animals; as soon as they entered a country, they
inquired what natural curiosities it contained, and they would send back
to their own land whatever specimens of them could be procured.

[Illustration: 237.jpg MONKEY BROUGHT BACK AS TRIBUTE]

Drawn by Boudier, from the bas-relief in Layard.

The triumphal _cortege_ which accompanied the monarch on his return
after each campaign comprised not only prisoners and spoil of a
useful sort, but curiosities from all the conquered districts, as,
for instance, animals of unusual form or habits, rhinoceroses and
crocodiles,* and if some monkey of a rare species had been taken in the
sack of a town, it also would find a place in the procession, either
held in a leash or perched on the shoulders of its keeper.

* A crocodile sent as a present by the King of Egypt is
mentioned in the _Inscription of the Broken Obelisk_. The
animal is called _namsukha_, which is the Egyptian _msuhu_
with the plural article _na._

The campaigns of the monarch were thus almost always of a double nature,
comprising not merely a conflict with men, but a continual pursuit of
wild beasts. Tiglath-pileser, "in the service of Ninib, had killed four
great specimens of the male urus in the desert of Mitanni, near to the
town of Araziki, opposite to the countries of the Khati;* he killed them
with his powerful bow, his dagger of iron, his pointed lance, and he
brought back their skins and horns to his city of Assur. He secured ten
strong male elephants, in the territory of Harran and upon the banks of
the Khabur, and he took four of them alive: he brought back their skins
and their tusks, together with the living elephants, to his city of
Assur." He killed moreover, doubtless also in the service of Ninib, a
hundred and twenty lions, which he attacked on foot, despatching eight
hundred more with arrows from his chariot,** all within the short space
of five years, and we may well ask what must have been the sum total,
if the complete record for his whole reign were extant. W