The tribute of the kings of the sea from the lands of the men of Tyre and Sidon and Arvad, which lieth in the midst of the sea, silver and gold and a great pagûtu and a small pagûtu and ivory and a dolphin, a creature of the sea, I received as tribute from them, and they embraced my feet.”
This “washing,” or as it has otherwise been rendered “dipping,” of a weapon in the sea is not to be taken, as it sometimes is, in a sense suggesting fishing by a harpoon or spear, or as typical of victory, but rather as a symbolical act of homage and propitiation to the unknown deities of the deep.
A later Assyrian king, Asurbanipal, no doubt from the value which the test of use in his many hunting expeditions afforded, regarded the dog from a point of view very different from that apparently taken by some of his subjects.
To judge by an old Assyrian prayer, “From the dog, the snake, and the scorpion, and whatever is baneful may Merodach preserve us,” the general feeling was that of fear.
But five clay models preserve for us representations of some of the king’s favourite hounds, with their names inscribed upon them. The appropriateness of their names betrays their master’s familiarity with canine traits, as we detect from Chaser of the Wicked, Conqueror of the Foe, Biter of his Enemy, Mighty in his help, He crossed the road and did his bidding![949]
At Harrān (according to al-Nadim), dogs were considered sacred and had offerings made unto them, a statement which is strengthened by the divine title at Harrān of My Lord with the Dogs, which seemingly points to Marduk and his four dogs, the name of one of which, Iltebu, “the Howler,” is as characteristic to-day as it was five thousand years ago.
In the Bible it is curious to note the low position of the dog. It is rarely spoken of with approval. Possibly the existence and proclivities of the numerous packs of pariah dogs account for the fact. Tobit seems the only person who makes his dog his companion, and then only when on journeys.[950]
Over two hundred kinds of fish are enumerated in the catalogue of Asurbanipal’s library at Nineveh: the attachment of the fish determinative constitutes our authority. No writer, even Dr. Boulenger, has classified or identified the fishes of Assyrian representations as thoroughly as Montet and others have those of the hieroglyphs.
The task would seem more formidable, for two reasons: first, the short time that cuneiform as compared with hieroglyph writing has been deciphered, and the wider study which Egyptian excavation has attracted; and second, the Assyrian artist treated his subjects more generally and more conventionally than his confrères in Egypt. Although in the sea and river scenes fish and shells are introduced, scarcely any distinctions mark particular ichthyic species. Contrast with this the representations of the return of Hatasu’s expedition from the land of Punt or Arabia. Here the artists depict the fishes so characteristically that Doenitz has identified them as belonging to the Red Sea, and even determined the species of each.
We can recognise in the rivers, crabs, sometimes with a fish caught in their claws, eels (or water-snakes), and small turtles. When the sculptor wished to indicate the sea, he made these fish larger, and to emphasise his point added others, which are only inhabitants of salt water, e.g. the star-fish.[951]