light the fragments of an Assyrian stele in
which a funerary scene is represented, but unfortunately its meaning is by
no means clear.[421] I cannot point to an Assyrian relief in which the same
theme is treated. Among so many battle pictures we do not find a single
scene analogous to those so often repeated in the pictures and sculptures
of Greece. The death and burial of an Assyrian warrior gave a theme to no
Assyrian sculptor. It would appear that the national pride revolted from
any confession that Assyrians could be killed like other men. All the
corpses in the countless battlefields are those of enemies, who are
sometimes mutilated and beheaded.[422]

These despised bodies were left to rot where they fell, and to feed the
crows and vultures;[423] but it is impossible to believe that the
Assyrians paid no honours to the bodies of their princes, their nobles, and
their relations, and some texts recently discovered make distinct allusions
to funerary rites.[424] We can hardly agree to the suggestions of M. Place,
who asks whether it is not possible that the Assyrians committed their
corpses to the river, like the modern Hindoos, or to birds of prey, like
the Guebres.[425] Usages so entirely out of harmony with the customs of
other ancient nations would certainly have been noticed by contemporary
writers, either Greek or Hebrew. In any case some allusion to them would
survive in Assyrian literature, but no hint of the kind is to be found.

But after we have rejected those hypotheses the question is no nearer to
solution than before; we are still confronted by the remarkable fact that
the Assyrians so managed to hide their dead that no trace of them has ever
been discovered. A conjecture offered by Loftus is the most inviting.[426]
He reminds us that although cemeteries are entirely absent from Assyria,
Chaldaea is full of them. Between Niffer and Mugheir each mound is a
necropolis. The Assyrians knew that Chaldaea was the birthplace of their
race and they looked upon it as a sacred territory. We find the Ninevite
kings, even when they were hardest upon their rebellious subjects in the
south, holding it as a point of honour to preserve and restore the temples
of Babylon and to worship there in royal pomp. Perhaps the Assyrians, or
rather those among them who could afford the expenses of the journey, had
their dead transferred to the graveyards of Lower Chaldaea. The latter
country, or, at least, a certain portion of it