MANNERS AND CUSTOMS.

“Whose arrows are sharp, and all their bows bent, their horses’ hoofs shall be counted like flint, and their wheels like a whirlwind.”—ISA. v. 28.

In reviewing, so far as our materials permit, the manners and customs of the Assyrians, it will be convenient to consider separately their warlike and their peaceful usages. The sculptures furnish very full illustration of the former, while on the latter they throw light far more sparingly.

The Assyrians fought in chariots, on horseback, and on foot. Like most ancient nations, as the Egyptians, the Greeks in the heroic times, the Canaanites, the Syrians, the Jews and Israelites, the Persians, the Gauls, the Britons, and many others, the Assyrians preferred the chariot as most honorable, and probably as most safe. The king invariably went out to war in a chariot, and always fought from it, excepting at the siege of a town, when he occasionally dismounted and shot his arrows on foot. The chief state-officers and other personages of high rank followed the same practice. Inferior persons served either as cavalry or as foot-soldiers.

The Assyrian war-chariot is thought to have been made of wood. Like the Greek and the Egyptian, it appears to have been mounted from behind where it was completely open, or closed only by means of a shield, which (as it seems) could be hung across the aperture. It was completely panelled at the sides, and often highly ornamented, as will be seen from the various illustrations given in this chapter. The wheels were two in number, and were placed far back, at or very near the extreme end of the body, so that the weight pressed considerably upon the pole, as was the case also in Egypt. They had remarkably broad felloes, thin and delicate spokes, and small or moderate sized axels. [PLATE LXXXIX. Fig. 2], and [PLATE XC., Figs. 1, 2.] The number of the spokes was either six or eight. The felloes appear to have been formed of three distinct circles of wood, the middle one being the thinnest, and the outer one far the thickest of the three. Sometimes these circles were fastened together externally by bands of mental, hatchet-shaped. In one or two instances we find the outermost circle divided by cross-bars, as if it had been composed of four different pieces. Occasionally there is a fourth circle, which seems to represent a metal tire outside the felloe, whereby it was guarded from injury. This tire is either plain or ornamented.

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The wheels were attached to an axletree, about which they revolved, in the usual manner. The body was placed directly upon the axletree and upon the pole, without the intervention of any springs. The pole started from the middle of the axle-tree, and, passing below the floor of the body in a horizontal direction, thence commonly curved upwards till it had risen to about half the height of the body, when it was again horizontal for awhile, once more curving upwards at the end. It usually terminated in an ornament, which was sometimes the head of an animal—a bull, a horse, or a duck—sometimes a more elaborate and complicated work of art. [PLATE XC., Fig. 3.] Now and then the pole continued level with the bottom of the body till it had reached its full projection, and then rose suddenly to the height of the top of the chariot. It was often strengthened by one or more thin bars, probably of metal; which united it to the upper part of the chariot-front.

Chariots were drawn either by two or three, never by four, horses. They seem to have had but a single pole. Where three horses were used, one must therefore have been attached merely by a rope or thong, like the side horses of the Greeks, and, can scarcely have been of much service for drawing the vehicle. He seems rightly regarded as a supernumerary, intended to take the place of one of the others, should either be disabled by a wound or accident. It is not easy to determine from the sculptures how the two draught horses were attached to the pole. Where chariots are represented without horses, we find indeed that they have always a cross-bar or yoke; but where horses are represented in the act of drawing a chariot, the cross-bar commonly disappears altogether. It would seem that the Assyrian artists, despairing of their ability to represent the yoke properly when it was presented to the eye end-wise, preferred, for the most part, suppressing it wholly to rendering it in an unsatisfactory manner. Probably a yoke did really in every case pass over the shoulders of the two draught horses, and was fastened by straps to the collar which is always seen round their necks.

These yokes, or cross-bars, were of various kinds. Sometimes they appear to have consisted of a mere slight circular bar, probably of metal, which passed through the pole; sometimes of a thicker spar, through which the pole itself passed. In this latter case the extremities were occasionally adorned with heads of animals. [PLATE XCI., Fig. 1.] The most common kind of yoke exhibits a double curve, so as to resemble a species of bow unstrung. [PLATE XCI., Fig. 2.] Now and then a specimen is found very curiously complicated, being formed of a bar curved strongly at either end, and exhibiting along its course four other distinct curvatures having opposite to there apertures resembling eyes, with an upper and a lower eyelid. [PLATE XCI., Fig. 3.] It has been suggested that this yoke belonged to a four-horse chariot, and that to each of the four eyes (a a a a) there was a steed attached; but, as no representation of a four-horse chariot has been found, this suggestion must be regarded as inadmissible. The probability seems to be that this yoke, like the others, was for two horses, on whose necks it rested at the points marked b b, the apertures (c c c c) lying thus on either side of the animals’ necks, and furnishing the means whereby the he was fastened to the collar. It is just possible that we have in the sculptures of the later period a representation of the extremities (d d) of this kind of yoke, since in them a curious curve appears sometimes on the necks of chariot-horses, just above the upper end of the collar.