s' heads,
takes a surer and more deadly aim from _terra firma_. In this case his
attendant defends him from missiles by extending in front of him a
shield, which he holds in his left hand, while at the same time he makes
ready to repel any close assailant by means of a spear or sword grasped
firmly in his right. The warrior's face and arms are always bare;
sometimes the entire head is undefended, though more commonly it has the
protection of a helmet. This, however, is without a visor, and does not
often so much as cover the ears. In some few instances only is it
furnished with flaps or lappets, which, where they exist, seem to be
made of metal scales, and, falling over the shoulders, entirely conceal
the ears, the back of the head, the neck, and even the chin.

The position occupied by chariots in the military system of Assyria is
indicated in several passages of Scripture, and distinctly noticed by
many of the classical writers. When Isaiah began to warn his countrymen
of the 'miseries in store for them at the hands of the new enemy which
first attacked Judea in his day, he described them as a people "whose
arrows were sharp, and all their bows bent, whose horses' hoofs should
be counted like flint, and their wheels like a whirlwind." When in after
days he was commissioned to raise their drooping courage by assuring
them that they would escape Sennacherib, who had angered God by his
pride, he noticed, as one special provocation of Jehovah, that monarch's
confidence in the multitude of his chariots. Nahum again, having to
denounce the approaching downfall of the haughty nation, declares that
God is "against her, and will burn her chariots in the smoke." In the
fabulous account which Ctesias gave of the origin of Assyrian greatness,
the war-chariots of Ninus were represented as amounting to nearly eleven
thousand, while those of his wife and successor, Semiramis, were
estimated at the extravagant number of a hundred thousand. Ctesias
further stated that the Assyrian chariots, even at this early period,
were armed with scythes, a statement contradicted by Xenophon, who
ascribes this invention to the Persians, and one which receives no
confirmation from the monuments. Amid all this exaggeration and
inventiveness, one may still trace a knowledge of the fact that
war-chariots were highly esteemed by the Assyrians from a very ancient
date, while from other notices we may gather that they continued to be
reckoned an important