No doubt the luxury of the Assyrian women in these and other respects was great and excessive. They are not likely to have fallen short of their Jewish sisters either in the refinements or in the corruptions of civilization. When then we hear of the “tinkling ornaments” of the Jewish women in Isaiah’s time, “their combs, and round tires like the moon,” their “chains and bracelets and mufflers,” their “bonnets, and ornaments of the legs, and head-bands, and tablets and ear-rings,” their “rings and nose-jewels,” their “changeable suits of apparel, and mantles, and wimples, and crisping-pins,” their “glasses, and fine linen, and hoods, and veils,” their “sweet smells, and girdles, and well-set hair, and stomachers,” we may be sure that in Assyria too these various refinements, or others similar to them, were in use, and consequently that the art of the toilet was tolerably well advanced under the second great Asiatic Empire. That the monuments contain little evidence on the point need not cause any surprise; since it is the natural consequence of the spirit of jealous reserve common to the Oriental nations, which makes them rarely either represent women in their mimetic art or speak of them in their public documents.
If various kinds of grain were cultivated in Assyria, such as wheat, barley, sesame, and millet, we may assume that the food of the inhabitants, like that of other agricultural nations, consisted in part of bread. Sesame was no doubt used, as it is at the present day, principally for making oil; while wheat, barley, and millet were employed for food, and were made into cakes or loaves. The grain used, whatever it was, would be ground between two stones, according to the universal Oriental practice even at the present day. It would then he moistened with water, kneaded in a dish or bowl, and either rolled into thin cakes, or pressed by the hand into smalls balls or loaves. Bread and cakes made in this way still form the chief food of the Arabs of these parts, who retain the habits of antiquity. Wheaten bread is generally eaten by preference; but the poorer sort are compelled to be content with the coarse millet or durra flour, which is made into cakes, and then eaten with milk, butter, oil, or the fat of animals.
Dates, the principal support of the inhabitants of Chaldaea, or Babylonia, both in ancient and in modern times, were no doubt also an article of food in Assyria, though scarcely to any great extent. The date-palm does not bear well above the alluvium, and such fruit as it produces in the upper country is very little esteemed. Olives were certainly cultivated under the Empire, and the oil extracted from them was in great request. Honey was abundant, and wine plentiful. Sennacherib called his land “a land of corn and wine, a land of bread and vineyards, a land of oil olive and of honey;” and the products here enumerated were probably those which formed the chief sustenance of the bulk of the people.
Meat, which is never eaten to any great extent in the East was probably beyond the means of most persons. Soldiers, however, upon an expedition were able to obtain this dainty at the expense of others; and accordingly we find that on such occasions they freely indulged in it. We see them, after their victories, killing and cutting up sheep and. oxen, and then roasting the joints, which are not unlike our own, on the embers of a wood-fires [PLATE CXXXVII., Fig. 2.] In the representations of entrenched camps we are shown the mode in which animals were prepared for the royal dinner. They were placed upon their backs on a high table, with their heads hanging over its edge; one man held them steady in this position, while another, taking hold of the neck, cut the throat a little below the chin. The blood dripped into a bowl or basin placed beneath the head on the ground. [PLATE CXXXVII., Fig. 3.] The animal was then no doubt, paunched, after which it was placed either whole, or in joints—in a huge pot or caldron, and, a fire being lighted underneath, it was boiled to such a point as suited the taste of the king. [PLATE CXXXVII., Fig. 5.] While the boiling progressed, some portions were perhaps fried on the fire below. [PLATE CXXXVII., Fig. 5.] Mutton appears to have been the favorite meat in the camp. At the court there would be a supply of venison, antelope’s flesh, hares, partridges, and other game, varied perhaps occasionally with such delicacies as the flesh of the wild ox and the onager.
Fish must have been an article of food in Assyria, or the monuments would not have presented us; with so many instances of fishermen. Locusts were also eaten, and were accounted a delicacy, as is proved by their occurrence among the choice dainties of a banquet, which the royal attendants are represented in one bas-relief as bringing into the palace of the king. Fruits, as was natural in so hot a climate, were highly prized; among those of most repute were pomegranates, grapes, citrons, and, apparently, pineapples. [PLATE CXXXVII., Fig. 4.]
There is reason to believe that the Assyrians drank wine very freely. The vine was cultivated extensively, in the neighborhood of Nimrud and elsewhere; and though there is no doubt that, grapes were eaten, both raw and dried, still the main purpose of the vineyards was unquestionably the production of wine. Assyria was “a land of corn and wine,” emphatically and before all else. Great banquets seem to have been frequent at the court, as at the courts of Babylon and Persia, in which drinking was practised on a large scale. The Ninevites generally are reproached as drunkards by Nahum. In the banquet-scenes of the sculptures, it is drinking and not eating that is represented. Attendants dip the wine-cups into a huge bowl or vase, which stands on the ground and reaches as high as a man’s chest and carry them full of liquor to the guests, who straightway fall to a carouse. [PLATE CXXXVIII., Fig. 1.]
The arrangement of the banquets is curious. The guests, who are in one instance some forty or fifty in number, instead of being received at a common table, are divided into messes of four, who sit together, two and two, facing each other, each mess having its own table and its own attendant. The guests are all clothed in the long tasselled gown, over which they wear the deeply fringed belt and cross-belt. They have sandals on their feet, and on their arias armlets and bracelets. They sit on high stools, from which their legs dangle; but in no case have they footstools, which would apparently have been a great convenience. Most of the guests are bearded men, but intermixed with them we see a few eunuchs. Every guest holds in his right hand a wine-cup of a most elegant shape, the lower part modelled into the form of a lion’s head, from which the cup itself rises in a graceful curve. [PLATE CXXXVIII., Fig. 2.] They all raise their cups to a level with their heads, and look as if they were either pledging each other, or else one and all drinking the same toast. Both the stools and the tables are handsome, and tastefully, though not very richly, ornamented. Each table is overspread with a table-cloth, which hangs down on either side opposite the guests, but does not cover the ends of the table, which are thus fully exposed to view. In their general make the tables exactly resemble that used in a banquet scene by a king of a later date, but their ornamentation is much less elaborate. On each of them appears to have been placed the enigmatical article of which mention has been already made as a strange object generally accompanying the king. Alongside of it we see in most instances a sort of rude crescent. These objects have probably, both of them, a sacred import, the crescent being the emblem of Sin, the Moon-God, while the nameless article had some unknown religious use or meaning.