* Nebuchadrezzar I. of Babylon assumes the title of Shamash
mati-shu, the “Sun of his country,” and Hilprecht rightly
sees in this expression a trace of Egyptian influences;
later on, Assurnazirpal, King of Assyria similarly describes
himself as Shamshu kishshat nishi, the “Sun of all
mankind.” Tiele is of opinion that these expressions do not
necessarily point to any theory of the actual incarnation of
the god, as was the case in Egypt, but that they may be mere
rhetorical figures.
Formerly he had only attained this apotheosis after death, later on he was permitted to aspire to it during his lifetime. The Chaldæans adopted the same attitude, and in both countries the royal authority shone with the borrowed lustre of divine omnipotence. With these exceptions life at court remained very much the same as it had been; at Nineveh, as at Babylon, we find harems filled with foreign princesses, who had either been carried off as hostages from the country of a defeated enemy, or amicably obtained from their parents. In time of war, the command of the troops and the dangers of the battle-field; in time of peace, a host of religious ceremonies and judicial or administrative duties, left but little leisure to the sovereign who desired to perform conscientiously all that was required of him. His chief amusement lay in the hunting of wild beasts: the majority of the princes who reigned over Assyria had a better right than even Amenôthes III. himself to boast of the hundreds of lions which they had slain. They set out on these hunting expeditions with quite a small army of charioteers and infantry, and were often away several days at a time, provided urgent business did not require their presence in the palace. They started their quarry with the help of large dogs, and followed it over hill and dale till they got within bowshot: if it was but slightly wounded and turned on them, they gave it the finishing stroke with their lances without dismounting.
Drawn by Boudier, from a bas-relief in the British Museum.
Occasionally, however, they were obliged to follow their prey into places where horses could not easily penetrate; then a hand-to-hand conflict was inevitable. The lion would rise on its hind quarters and endeavour to lay its pursuer low with a stroke of its mighty paw, but only to fall pierced to the heart by his lance or sword.
Drawn by Boudier, from a bas-relief in the British Museum.
This kind of encounter demanded great presence of mind and steadiness of hand; the Assyrians were, therefore, trained to it from their youth up, and no hunter was permitted to engage in these terrible encounters without long preliminary practice. Seeing the lion as they did so frequently, and at such close quarters, they came to know it quite as well as the Egyptians, and their sculptors reproduce it with a realism and technical skill which have been rarely equalled in modern times. But while the Theban artist generally represents it in an attitude of repose, the Assyrians prefer to show it in violent action in all the various attitudes which it assumes during a struggle, either crouching as it prepares to spring, or fully extended in the act of leaping; sometimes it rears into an upright position, with arched back, gaping jaws, and claws protruded, ready to bite or strike its foe; at others it writhes under a spear-thrust, or rolls over and over in its dying agonies. In one instance, an arrow has pierced the skull of a male lion, crashing through the frontal bone a little above the left eyebrow, and protrudes obliquely to the right between his teeth: under the shock of the blow he has risen on his hind legs, with contorted spine, and beats the air with his fore paws, his head thrown back as though to free himself of the fatal shaft. Not far from him the lioness lies stretched out upon its back in the rigidity of death.