The Ass was known from the earliest period, both the wild ass, which Ashur-bani-pal seems to have been so fond of hunting (cf. Pl. [XX]), and also the domesticated ass. Ward has only found one example of its early representation on cylinder-seals, but the god Nin-girsu’s chariot on the famous Vulture Stele is drawn by an ass, and the fact that Urukagina, one of the kings of the First Dynasty of Lagash, enacted that if a good ass was foaled in the stable of one of the king’s subjects, the king could only purchase it by offering a fair price, and that even then he could not compel the owner to part with it, shows that the ass was in common use in his day.
The Dog finds a place on some of the earliest seals from Babylonia, and is especially common on those representing the legend of Etana and the Eagle (cf. Fig. [62]): he also appears on the later Babylonian seals, and is of very frequent occurrence in the Assyrian bas-reliefs.
Here they are seen employed in the chase (cf. Pl. [XX]). The Assyrian hounds apparently resembled mastiffs, and according to Layard the breed is still extant in Tibet though not in Mesopotamia. We have another good reproduction of a dog on a terra-cotta plaque found by Sir H. Rawlinson at Birs-Nimrûd (cf. Fig. [88]), while Ashur-bani-pal has left us a number of clay models of his dogs, made in one piece like the colossal bulls, but rather crude in workmanship. Though we thus know little about the breeds of dogs with which the Assyrians and Babylonians were familiar, we at all events know, that they were acquainted with dogs of various colours, for they derived omens from piebald dogs, yellow dogs, black dogs, white dogs and the rest.
The Gazelle was known in Mesopotamia from an early day, and he sometimes appears to take the place of the goat as a victim for sacrifice.
The Antelope is often found represented on early cylinder-seals, and apparently it was occasionally yoked to the plough, as may be seen from an early stone relief from Nippur,[11] but it is not always easy to distinguish between the antelope and the goat in Babylonian art.
The Ibex is similarly liable to be confused with the mountain sheep, owing to the shape of their horns, but where correctly depicted, it has a beard. A good and very early example of the Ibex is to be found engraved on a fragment of shell belonging to the earliest Sumerian period (cf. Louvre Cat. No. 222).
The Boar was not often figured, but was without doubt sufficiently common as it is to-day; it is found on an extremely archaic seal (cf. Fig. [54]), and numbers of little swine are repeated in four registers on a later cylinder-seal, while on other seals, the huntsman is seen spearing a boar, and lastly a sow with her young are represented on one of the wall-reliefs from Sennacherib’s palace at Kouyunjik. It is interesting to note that as early as the time of Khammurabi[12] pork was a highly valued food, so much so that it frequently formed part of the temple offerings, and Ungnad calls attention to one case where a certain maleficent person stole one of the temple-pigs and paid a heavy penalty for so doing, while in the official lists of the provisions for the temple, various parts of the pig are specifically enumerated, while from the inspection of pigs favourable and unfavourable omens were derived.
The Rabbit or Hare is rarely found in early sculptures or engravings, but it occurs on the later so-called Syro-Hittite cylinders, and is occasionally portrayed on the Assyrian bas-reliefs.[13]
The Oryx, the Mountain-Sheep, the Stag, the Tortoise, the Porcupine, the Monkey, all occur occasionally on the cylinders, while as regards the monkey, he forms part of the tribute brought by subject peoples to Shalmaneser II on the Black Obelisk, and is also similarly depicted on the bas-reliefs which adorned the walls of Ashur-naṣir-pal’s palace at Nimrûd, in both of which latter, the monkeys represented appear to belong to an Indian species, and were clearly novelties in the eyes of the Assyrians, who no doubt valued them accordingly.
There are solitary instances of the Fox, the Frog and the Bear, but none of the foregoing play what may be called an important part in the history of the country’s art. The Lion and the Serpent occupy a prominent position in artistic representations, and were undoubtedly familiar and formidable entities in real life, while the majesty of the former and the subtlety of the latter were alone sufficient to obtain for them a place in the mythological and heraldic symbolism of the dwellers of Mesopotamia. The lion was known everywhere, in highlands and lowlands alike, while he still haunts the low marsh country of Babylonia. On the cylinder-seals he generally appears engaged in deadly combat with Gilgamesh, the hero of Babylonian folk-lore, or his friend Ea-bani who of course on all occasions worsts him; he is figured in clay and stone from the earliest (cf. Fig. [26], B) to the latest times, he is embroidered on garments, and decorates scabbards, while he plays an all-important part in the heraldic device of the ancient city of Lagash, which is composed of an eagle with outspread wings, clutching two lions facing in opposite directions (cf. Fig. [27]), doubtless emblematic of the dominion exercised by the king of Lagash over the peoples of the East and West respectively. He enjoys the doubtful honour of being the peculiar object of the Assyrian King’s attention in later days, and afforded him the sport which he loved above all others (cf. Pl. [XIX]); individual kings slew great numbers, and Tukulti-Ninib I (1275 B.C.), to take a single example, places it on record that he slew some 920 lions, just as Amenḥetep III king of Egypt similarly boasts that he killed 102 lions in the first ten years of his reign. Originally no doubt lions were sufficiently plentiful, but as their numbers were thinned, it became necessary to capture and preserve them in cages till they were required for the royal hunt (cf. Pl. [XXVII]). The lion is sometimes reproduced in colossal size, and endowed with wings and the head of a man, in which capacity, stationed at the portals of the King’s palace, his vocation is to ward off the advances of malevolent and maleficent demons, while at other times, he is less fully equipped, and is provided only with a head, bust and hands of a man. Always a creature of weight in more ways than one, his body is not unfittingly adapted to the requirements of the scales; a considerable number of bronze lion-weights have come down to us, the workmanship of which was probably Phœnician (as was also the ivory work of the Assyrian empire), while the weight represented by each lion was inscribed in Phœnician characters. Sometimes again the hollow bronze head of a lion formed the ornate fitting of the end of a chariot-pole. As a general rule, the lion emblematized the King’s enemies, hence it is that, whenever he is seen engaged in conflict, he is always overpowered either by sheer bodily strength as in the case of Gilgamesh, or transfixed by an arrow, speared, or stabbed as we see him so frequently on the bas-reliefs of Assyrian palaces. But lions were probably domesticated now and again as they are to-day. On Sir Henry Layard’s first visit to Hillah, he was presented with two lions by Osman Pasha; one of these, he tells us, was a well-known frequenter of the bazaars, the butcher-shops of which he was in the habit of regularly looting, but apart from this amiable little vagary, he appears to have been fairly well-behaved. In his description of the animal, Layard says that he was “taller and larger than a St. Bernard dog, and like the lion generally found on the banks of the rivers of Mesopotamia was without the dark and shaggy mane of the African species.” He further informs us that he had however, seen lions with a long black mane on the river Karûn, which river flows into the Gulf not far from Moḥammerah in the extreme south of Babylonia; but lions of either class are very rarely seen in Mesopotamia to-day, and these as a rule, only at a distance.