[165] Layard, Nineveh, vol. i. pp. 126–127. The English explorer himself remarks in speaking of this relief, that the features of the men show nothing of the special type which the artist endeavoured to suggest by this clumsy expedient.
[166] This is what M. Ménant sees in this Babylonian stele: “It represents a race with a short, thickset body, a short neck buried between the shoulders, a flat nose and thick lips” (p. 259 of his paper).
[167] Layard, Discoveries, p. 537.
[168] Herodotus, i. 192.
[169] Loftus gives a poor reproduction of this monument, which he found at Sinkara (Travels, &c., p. 258). We have not reproduced it, because it is in much worse condition than the terra-cotta dog.
[170] Herodotus, i. 193.
[171] Rawlinson, The Five Great Monarchies, vol. i. p. 234. Upon each of these figures appears the dog’s name, which always bears some relation to the qualities he displayed in the performance of his duties.
[172] This relief is figured in Rawlinson, The Five Great Monarchies, vol. i. p. 356.
[173] W. Houghton, On the Mammalia of the Assyrian Sculptures in the Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archæology, vol. v. pp. 33–64, and 579–583.
[174] We are tempted to believe that these animals were exterminated before the days of the Sargonids by the unrelenting pursuit to which they were subjected; they are not to be found in the pictures of Assurbanipal’s hunts. On the other hand, in the palace of Assurnazirpal, which dates from two centuries earlier, they were figured with peculiar insistence and in great detail (Layard, Monuments, first series, plates 11, 12, 32, 43–44, 46, 48 and 49).