similar band appears on one
occasion in a triumphal return from a military expedition belonging to
the time of Sennacherib. [PLATE CXXI.]

[Illustration: PLATE 131]

In several instances we find bands of three musicians. In one case all
three play the lyre. The musicians here are certainly captives, whom the
Assyrians have borne off front their own country. It has been thought
that their physiognomy is Jewish, and that the lyre which they bear in
their hands may represent that "kind of harp" which the children of the
later captivity hung up upon the willows when they wept by the rivers of
Babylon. There are no sufficient grounds, however, for this
identification. The lyre may be pronounced foreign, since it is unlike
any other specimen; but its ornamentation with an animal head is
sufficient to show that it is not Jewish. And the Jewish _kinnor_ was
rather a harp than a lyre, and had certainly more than four strings.
Still, the employment of captives as musicians is interesting, though we
cannot say that the captives are Jews. It shows us that the Assyrians,
like the later Babylonians, were in the habit of "requiring" music from
their prisoners, who, when transported into a "strange land," had to
entertain their masters with their native melodies.

Another band of three exhibits to us a harper, a player on the lyre, and
a player on the double pipe. A third shows a harper, a player on the
lyre, and a musician whose instrument is uncertain. In this latter case
it is quite possible that there may originally have been more musicians
than three, for the sculpture is imperfect, terminating in the middle of
a figure.

Bands of four performers are about as common as bands of three. On an
obelisk belonging to the time of Asshur-izir-pal we see a band composed
of two cymbal-players and two performers on the lyre. A slab of
Sennacherib's exhibits four harpers arranged in two pairs, all playing
with the _plectrum_ on the antique harp. Another of the same date, which
is incomplete, shows us a tambourine-player, a cymbal-player, a player
on the nondescript instrument which has been called a sort of rattle,
and another whose instrument cannot be distinguished. In a sculpture of
a later period, which is represented above, we see a band of four,
composed of a tambourine-player, two players on two different sorts of
lyres, and a cymbal-player.

It is not often that we find representations of bands containing more
than four perform