In the great banqueting scene at Khorsabad, from which the above description is chiefly taken, it is shown that the Assyrians, like the Egyptians and the Greeks in the heroic times, had the entertainment of music at their grand feasts and drinking bouts. At one end of the long series of figures representing guests and attendants was a band of performers, at least three in number, two of whom certainly played upon the lyre. The lyres were ten-stringed, of a square shape, and hung round the player’s neck by a string or ribbon.
The Assyrians also resembled the Greeks and Romans in introducing flowers into their feasts. We have no evidence that they wore garlands, or crowned themselves with chaplets of flowers, or scattered roses over their rooms; but still they appreciated the delightful adornment which flowers furnish. In the long train of attendance represented at Koyunjik as bringing the materials of a banquet into the palace of the king, a considerable number bear vases of flowers. [PLATE CXXXVIII., Fig. 3.] These were probably placed on stands, like those which are often seen supporting jars, and dispersed about the apartment in which the feast was held, but not put upon the tables.
We have no knowledge of the ordinary houses of the Assyrians other than that which we derive from the single representation which the sculptures furnish of a village certainly Assyrian. It appears from this specimen that the houses were small, isolated from one another, and either flat-roofed, or else covered in with a dome or a high cone. They had no windows, but must have been lighted from the top, where, in some of the roofs, an aperture is discernible. The doorway was generally placed towards one end of the house; it was sometimes arched, but more often square-headed.
The doors in Assyrian houses were either single, as commonly with ourselves, or folding (fores or valvoe), as with the Greeks and Romans, and with the modern French and Italians. Folding-doors were the most common in palaces. They were not hung upon hinges, like modern doors, but, like those of the classical nations, turned upon pivots. At Khorsabad the pavement slabs in the doorways showed everywhere the holes in which these pivots had worked, while in no instance did the wall at the side present any trace of the insertion of a hinge. Hinges, however, in the proper sense of the term, were not unknown to the Assyrians; for two massive bronze sockets found at Nimrud, which weighed more than six pounds each, and had a diameter of about five inches, must have been designed to receive the hinges of a door or gate, hung exactly as gates are now hung among ourselves. [PLATE CXXXVIII., Fig. 4.] The folding-doors were fastened by bolts, which were shot into the pavement at the point where the two doors met; but in the case of single doors a lock seems to have been used, which was placed about four feet from the ground, and projected from the door itself, so that a recess had to be made in the wall behind the door to receive the lock when the door stood open. The bolt of the lock was of an oblong square shape and was shot into the wall against which the door closed.
The ordinary character of Assyrian furniture did not greatly differ from the furniture of modern times. That of the poorer classes was for the most part extremely plain, consisting probably of such tables, couches, and low stools as we see in the representations which are so frequent, of the interiors of soldier’s tents. In these the tables are generally of the cross-legged kind; the couches follow the pattern given in a previous page of this volume, except that the legs do not end in pine-shaped ornaments; and the stools are either square blocks, or merely cut en chevron. There are no chairs. The low stools evidently form the ordinary seats of the people, on which they sit to converse or to rest themselves. The couches seem to have been the beds whereon the soldiers slept, and it may be doubted if the Assyrians knew of any other. In the case of the monarch we have seen that the bedding consisted of a mattress, a large round pillow or cushion, and a coverlet; but in these simple couches of the poor we observe only a mattress, the upper part of which is slightly raised and fitted into the curvature of the arm, so as to make a substitute for a pillow. Perhaps, however, the day-laborer may have enjoyed on a couch of this simple character slumbers sounder and more refreshing than Sardanapalus amid his comparative luxury.
The household utensils seen in combination with these simple articles of furniture are few and somewhat rudely shaped. A jug with a long neck, an angular handle, and a pointed bottom, is common: it usually hangs from a nail or hook inserted into the tent-pole. Vases and bowls of a simple form occur, but are less frequent. The men are seen with knives in their hands, and appear sometimes to be preparing food for their meals; but the form of the knife is marked very indistinctly. Some of the household articles represented have a strange and unusual appearance. One is a sort of short ladder, but with semicircular projections at the bottom, the use of which is not apparent; another may be a board at which some game was played; while a third is quite inexplicable. From actual discoveries of the utensils themselves, we know that the Assyrians used dishes of stone, alabaster, and bronze. They had also bronze cups, bowls, and plates, often elaborately patterned. The dishes had commonly a handle at the side, either fixed or movable, by which, when not in use, they could be carried or hung on pegs. Chaldrons of bronze were also common: they varied from five feet to eighteen inches in height, and from two feet and a half to six feet in diameter. Jugs, funnels, ladles, and jars have been found in the same metal; one of the funnels is shaped nearly like a modern wine strainer.
The Assyrians made use of bronze bells with iron tongues, and, to render the sound of these more pleasing, they increased the proportion of the tin to the copper, raising it front ten to fourteen per cent. The bells were always of small size, never (so far as appears) exceeding three inches and a quarter in height and two inches and a quarter in diameter. It is uncertain whether they were used, as modern bells, to summon attendants, or only attached, as we see them on the sculptures, to the collars and headstalls of horses.
Some houses, but probably not very many, had gardens attached to them. The Assyrian taste in gardening was like that of the French. Trees of a similar character, or tall trees alternating with short ones, were planted in straight rows at an equal distance from one another, while straight paths and walks, meeting each other at right angles, traversed the grounds. Water was abundantly supplied by means of canals drawn off from a neighboring river, or was brought by an aqueduct from a distance. A national taste of a peculiar kind, artificial and extravagant to a degree, caused the Assyrians to add to the cultivation of the natural ground the monstrous invention of “Hanging Gardens:” an invention introduced into Babylonia at a comparatively late date, but known in Assyria as early as the time of Sennacherib. A “hanging garden” was sometimes combined with an aqueduct, the banks of the stream which the aqueduct bore being planted with trees of different kinds. At other times it occupied the roof of a building, probably raised for the purpose, and was supported upon a number of pillars.
The employments of the Assyrians, which receive some illustration from the monuments, are, besides war and hunting—subjects already discussed at length—chiefly building, boating, and agriculture. Of agricultural laborers, there occur two or three only, introduced by the artists into a slab of Sennacherib’s which represents the transport of a winged bull. They are dressed in the ordinary short tunic and belt, and are employed in drawing water from a river by the help of hand-swipes for the purpose of irrigating their lands. Boatmen are far more common. They are seen employed in the conveyance of masses of stone, and of other materials for building, ferrying men and horses across a river, guiding their boat while a fisherman plies his craft from it, assisting soldiers to pursue the enemy, and the like. They wear the short tunic and belt, and sometimes have their hair encircled with a fillet. Of laborers, employed in work connected with building, the examples are numerous. In the long series of slabs representing the construction of some of Sennacherib’s great works, although the bulk of those employed as laborers appear to be foreign captives, there are a certain number of the duties—duties less purely mechanical than the others which are devolved on Assyrians. Assyrians load the hand-carts, and sometimes even draw them, convey the implements—pickaxes, saws, shovels, hatchets, beams, forks, coils of rope—place the rollers, arrange the lever and work it, keep the carved masses of stone steady as they are moved along to their proper places, urge on the gangs of forced laborers with sticks, and finally direct the whole of the proceedings by signals, which they give with their voice or with a long horn. Thus, however ample the command of naked human strength enjoyed by the Assyrian king, who had always at his absolute disposal the labor of many thousand captives, still there was in every great work much which could only be intrusted to Assyrians, who appear to have been employed largely in the grand constructions of their monarchs.
The implements of labor have a considerable resemblance to those in present use among ourselves. The saws were two-handed; but as the handle was in the same line with the blade, instead of being set at right angles to it, they must have been somewhat awkward to use. The shovels were heart-shaped, like those which Sir C. Fellows noticed in Asia Minor. The pickaxes had a single instead of a double head, while the hatchets were double-headed, though here probably the second head was a mere knob intended to increase the force of the blow. The hand-carts were small and of very simple construction: they were made open in front and behind, but had a slight framework at the sides. They had a pole rising a little in front, and were generally drawn by two men. The wheels were commonly four-spoked. When the load had been placed on the cart, it seems to have been in general secured by two bands or ropes, which were passed over it diagonally, so as to cross each other at the top.