[897] History of Sumer and Akkad (London, 1910), p. 322.
[898] Egyptian Archæology (1902), p. 366.
[899] Historical Studies (London, 1910), II. p. 22. Others would make the invasion about 2466.
[900] The Babylonian legend of Adapa is thus known to have circulated in Palestine and Egypt before the Hebrew Exodus. The story of Adapa is thought by some to have influenced the Hebrew version of the story of Adam and Eve and the loss of Paradise. See the excellent discussion in T. Skinner, Genesis (in the International Critical Commentary (1912), p. 91 ff), and Langdon, The Sumerian Epic of Paradise (University of Pennsylvania, Publications of the Babylonia Section, 1915), vol. X., pp. 38-49.
[901] Rameses II. was held in high esteem as a rain-maker—perhaps rain-god—as is evidenced by the sacrifices offered by the Hittites that their princess should on her journey to Egypt to marry Rameses enjoy fair weather, despite that it was the season of the winter storms. In consequence of this power over the elements, the Hittite chiefs strongly advocated friendship with Egypt, as otherwise Rameses II. would probably stop rain and cause a famine in their country (Breasted, Ancient Records, III. 423, 426).
[902] Layard, Nineveh (London, 1849), vol. II. p. 438.
[903] “Fishing, fishing everywhere” is the key-note of the picture; the crab in the top left-hand corner is also well into his fish. The picture [facing p. 349] comes from the Assyrian sculptures in British Museum: in Mansell’s collection, No. 430.
[904] We sometimes find with an army crossing a river, as delineated in the sculptures, each soldier with the skin beneath his belly and paddling with his legs and arms, but retaining in his mouth one of the legs of the skin, into which he blows as into a bagpipe. The act of paddling across a big river, like the Euphrates, would of itself need all his breath; but King points out that the sculptor, in the spirit of primitive art, which, diffident of its own powers of portrayal or distrusting the imagination of the beholder, seeks to make its object clear by conventional devices, wishes to indicate that the skins are not solid bodies, and can find no better way of showing it than by making his swimmers continue blowing out the skins.
[905] Five Great Monarchies (London, 1862-67), vol. I. p. 99.
[906] In each case Esarhaddon “cut off his head.” Both heads were sent to Nineveh for exhibition. Asur-bani-pal was a greater specialist in heads than his father: the head of any foe whom he particularly hated or feared, such as Teumann of Elam, was preserved by some method, and hung conspicuously in the famed gardens of the palace. A sculptured representation hands down the scene to us. The king reclines on an elevated couch under an arbour of vines: his favourite queen is seated on a throne at the foot of the couch: both are raising wine cups to their lips: many attendants ply the inevitable fly-flappers, while at a distance musicians are ranged. Birds play and flutter among the palm and cypress trees; from one dangles Teumann’s head on which the eyes of the king are gloating. Such is the picture drawn by de Razogin, Ancient Assyria (London, 1888).