The other attendants on the monarch require no special notice. With regard to their number, however, it may be observed that, although the sculptures generally do not represent them as very numerous, there is reason to believe that they amounted to several hundreds. The enormous size of the palaces can scarcely be otherwise accounted for: and in one sculpture of an exceptional character, where the artist seems to have aimed at representing his subject in full, we can count above seventy attendants present with the monarch at one time. Of these less than one-half are eunuch; and these wear the long robe with the fringed belt and cross-belt. The other attendants wear in many cases the same costume; sometimes, however, they are dressed in a tunic and greaves, like the soldiers.
There can be no doubt that the court ceremonial of the Assyrians was stately and imposing. The monarch seems indeed not to have affected that privacy and seclusion which forms a predominant feature of the ceremonial observed in most Oriental monarchies. He showed himself very freely to his subjects on many occasions. He superintended in person the accomplishment of his great works. In war and in the chase he rode in an open chariot, never using a litter, though litters were not unknown to the Assyrians. In his expeditions he would often descend from his chariot, and march or fight on foot like the meanest of his subjects. But though thus familiarizing the multitude with his features and appearance, he was far from allowing familiarity of address. Both in peace and war he was attended by various officers of state, and no one had speech of him except through them. It would even seem as if two persons only were entitled to open a conversation with him—the Vizier and the Chief Eunuch. When he received them, he generally placed himself upon his throne, sitting, while they stood to address him. It is strongly indicative of the haughty pride of these sovereigns that they carried with them in their distant expeditions the cumbrous thrones whereon they were wont to sit when they dispensed justice or received homage. On these thrones they sat, in or near their fortified camps, when the battle or the siege was ended, and thus sitting they received in state the spoil and the prisoners. Behind them on such occasions were the two fan-bearers, while near at hand were guards, scribes, grooms, and other attendants. In their palace halls undoubtedly the ceremonial used was stricter, grander, and more imposing. The sculptures, however, furnish no direct evidence on this point, for there is nothing to mark the scene of the great processional pieces.
In the pseudo-history of Ctesias, the Assyrian kings were represented as voluptuaries of the extremest kind, who passed their whole lives within the palace, in the company of their concubines and their eunuchs, indulging themselves in perpetual ease, pleasure, and luxury. We have already seen how the warlike character of so many monarchs gives the lie to these statements, so far as they tax the Assyrian kings with sloth and idleness. It remains to examine the charge of over-addiction to sensual delights, especially to those of the lowest and grossest description. Now it is at least remarkable that, so far as we have any real evidence, the Assyrian kings appear as monogamists. In the inscription on the god Nebo, the artist dedicates his statue to his “lord Vol-lush (?) and his lady, Sammuramit.” In the solitary sculptured representation of the private life of the king, he is seen in the company of one female only. Even in the very narrative of Ctesias, Ninus has but one wife, Semiramis; and Sardanapalus, notwithstanding his many concubines, has but five children, three sons and two daughters. It is not intended to press these arguments to an extreme, or to assume, on the strength of them, that the Assyrian monarchs were really faithful to one woman. They may have had—nay, it is probable that they had—a certain number of concubines; but there is really not the least ground for believing that they carried concubinage to an excess, or over-stepped in this respect the practice of the best Eastern sovereigns. At any rate they were not the voluptuaries which Ctesias represented them. A considerable portion of their lives was passed in the toils and dangers of war; and their peaceful hours, instead of being devoted to sloth and luxury in the retirement of the palace, were chiefly employed, as we shall presently see, in active and manly exercises in the field, which involved much exertion and no small personal peril.
The favorite occupation of the king in peace was the chase of the lion. In the early times he usually started on a hunting expedition in his chariot, dressed as when he went out to war, and attended by his charioteer, some swordsmen, and a groom holding a led horse. He carried a bow and arrows, a sword, one or two daggers, and a spear, which last stood in a rest made for it at the back of the chariot. Two quivers, each containing an axe and an abundant supply of arrows, hung from the chariot transversely across its right side, while a shield armed with teeth was suspended behind. When a lion was found, the king pursued it in his chariot, letting fly his arrows as he went, and especially seeking to pierce the animal about the heart and head. Sometimes he transfixed the beast with three or four shafts before it succumbed. Occasionally the lion attacked him in his chariot, and was met with spear and shield, or with a fresh arrow, according to the exigencies of the moment, or the monarch’s preference for one or the other weapon. On rare occasions the monarch descended to the ground, and fought on foot. He would then engage the lion in close combat with no other weapon but a short sword, which he strove to plunge, and often plunged, into his heart. [PLATE CXVIII., Fig. 2.]
In the later time, though the chariot was still employed to some extent in the lion-hunts, it appears to have been far more usual for the king to enjoy the sport on foot. He carried a straight sword, which seems to have been a formidable weapon; it was strong, very broad, and two feet or a little more in length. Two attendants waited closely upon the monarch, one of whom carried a bow and arrows, while the other was commonly provided with one or two spears. From these attendants the king took the bow or spear at pleasure, usually commencing the attack with his arrows, and finally despatching the spent animal with sword or spear, as he deemed best. Sometimes, but not very often, the spearman in attendance carried also a shield, and held both spear and shield in advance of his master to protect him from the animal’s spring. Generally the monarch faced the danger with no such protection, and received the brute on his sword, or thrust him through with his pike. [PLATE CXVIII., Fig. 3;] [PLATE CXIX., Fig. 1.] Perhaps the sculptures exaggerate the danger which he affronted at such moments; but we can hardly suppose that there was not a good deal of peril incurred in these hand-to-hand contests.
Two modes of hunting the king of beasts were followed at this time. Either he was sought in his native haunts, which were then, as now, the reedy coverts by the side of the canals and great streams; or he was procured beforehand, conveyed to the hunting-ground, and there turned out before the hunters. In the former case the monarch took the field accompanied by his huntsmen and beaters on horse and foot, these last often holding dogs in leash, which, apparently, were used only to discover and arouse the game, but were not slipped at it when started. No doubt the hunt was sometimes entirely on the land, the monarch accompanying his beaters along one or other of the two banks of a canal or stream. But a different plan is known to have been adopted on some occasions. Disposing his beaters to the right and left upon both banks, the monarch with a small band of attendants would take ship, and, while his huntsmen sought to start the game on either side, he would have himself rowed along so as just to keep pace with them, and would find his sport in attacking such lions as took the water. The monarch’s place on these occasions was the middle of the boat. Before him and behind him were guards armed with spears, who were thus ready to protect their master, whether the beast attacked him in front or rear. The monarch used a round bow, like that commonly carried in war, and aimed either at the heart or at the head. The spearmen presented their weapons at the same time, while the sides of the boat were also sufficiently high above the water to afford a considerable protection against the animal’s spring. An attendant immediately behind the monarch held additional arrows ready for him; and after piercing the noble brute with three or four of these weapons, the monarch had commonly the satisfaction of seeing him sink down and expire. The carcass was then taken from the water, the fore and hind legs were lashed together with string, and the beast was suspended from the hinder part of the boat, where he hung over the water just out of the sweep of the oars.
At other times, when it was felt that the natural chase of the animal might afford little or no sport, the Assyrians (as above stated) called art to their assistance, and, having obtained a supply of lions from a distance, brought them in traps or cages to the hunting-ground, and there turned them out before the monarch. The walls of the cage was made of thick spars of wood, with interstices between them, through which the lion could both see and be seen: probably the top was entirely covered with boards, and upon these was raised a sort of low hut or sentry-box, just large enough to contain a man, who, when the proper moment arrived, peeped forth from his concealment and cautiously raised the front of the trap, which was a kind of drop-door working in a groove. [PLATE CXIX., Fig. 2.] The trap being thus opened, the lion stole out, looking somewhat ashamed of his confinement, but doubtless anxious to vent his spleen on the first convenient object. The king, prepared for his attack, saluted him, as he left his cage, with an arrow, and, as he advanced, with others, which sometimes stretched him dead upon the plain, sometimes merely disabled him, while now and then they only goaded him to fury. In this case he would spring at the royal chariot, clutch some part of it, and in his agony grind it between his teeth, or endeavor to reach the inmates of the car from behind. If the king had descended from the car to the plain, the infuriated beast might make his spring at the royal person, in which case it must have required a stout heart to stand unmoved, and aim a fresh arrow at a vital part while the creature was in mid-air, especially if (as we sometimes see represented) a second lion was following close upon the first, and would have to be received within a few seconds. It would seem that the lions on some occasions were not to be goaded into making an attack, but simply endeavored to escape by flight. To prevent this, troops were drawn up in a double line of spearmen and archers round the space within which the lions were let loose, the large shields of the front or spearmen line forming a sort of wall, and the spears a chevaux de frise, through which it was almost impossible for the beasts to break. In front of the soldiers, attendants held hounds in leashes, which either by their baying and struggling frightened the animals back, or perhaps assisted to despatch them. [PLATE CXIX., Fig. 3.] The king meanwhile plied his bow, and covered the plain with carcasses, often striking a single beast with five or six shafts.
The number of lions destroyed at these royal battues is very surprising. In one representation no fewer than eighteen are seen upon the field, of which eleven are dead and five seriously wounded. The introduction of trapped beasts would seem to imply that the game, which under the earlier monarchs had been exceedingly abundant,—failed comparatively under the later ones, who therefore imported it from a distance. It is evident, however, that this scarcity was not allowed to curtail the royal amusement. To gratify the monarch, hunters sought remote and savage districts, where the beast was still plentiful, and, trapping their prey, conveyed it many hundreds of miles to yield a momentary pleasure to the royal sportsman.