[95] Esther iii. 2, 3, iv. 2, 6.
[96] At Semil, to the north of Mossoul, Layard saw the Yezidi chief, “Abde Agha, seated in the gate, a vaulted entrance with deep recesses on both sides, used as places of assembly for business during the day, and as places of rest for guests during the night.”—Discoveries, p. 57.
[97] Place, Ninive, vol. i. p. 186.
[98] It is even believed that the Assyrians used a machine for launching great stones, like the Roman catapult. The representations in the bas-reliefs are not, however, very clear. Rawlinson, The Five Great Monarchies, vol. i. p. 472.
[99] Place, Ninive, vol. i. p. 196. Causeways of this kind may be noticed stretching away from the tower in our Fig. 29. See also Layard, Monuments, 2nd series, plates 18 and 21.
[100] A few terra-cotta statuettes have certainly been found, but these seem to be idols rather than images of the defunct.
[101] The ordinary and principal office of the human-headed bull, was to guard the doors of temples and palaces, but in his rôle of protecting genius, other functions were included. Thus, in a bas-relief representing Sargon’s campaigns in Phœnicia, we find a bull that seems to be walking on the sea. With Anon, Oannes, or Dagon, the fish-god, he presides over the journeys of the ships that bring cargoes of wood from Lebanon (Botta, Monument de Ninive, plate 32).
[102] M. Lenormant has collected these texts in his Origines de l’Histoire, vol. i. p. 115.
[103] This must represent one of the favourite rites of the Chaldæo-Assyrian religion, allusion to it is made in the passage given as a letter of Jeremiah (Baruch vi. 25): “Now shall ye see in Babylon gods of silver, and of gold, and of wood, borne upon shoulders, which cause the nations to fear.”
[104] Chabouillet (Catalogue général des Camées de la Bibliothèque nationale, No. 754) proposes to recognize in the scene here represented the offering of his nightly spouse to Bel in his temple at Babylon (Herodotus, i. 181). M. Lenormant agrees with this interpretation (Essai de commentaire des Fragments de Bérose, p. 374). Ménant, on the other hand, thinks it as little justified as that which finds the early scenes of Genesis—the temptation of Eve, and the eating of the forbidden fruit—reproduced upon the cylinders (Remarques sur un cylindre du Musée Britannique, in the Comptes rendus de l’Académie des Inscriptions, 1879, pp. 270–286).