Note 159 — Chapter II · SCULPTURE.

An almost unique exception to this rule occurs in those bas-reliefs in the British Museum which represent the great hunts of Assurbanipal. We there see a company of beardless individuals marching, bare-headed, dressed in a short tunic and armed with lance and buckler. But this is an apparent rather than a real exception. The chase is not war. These men are not soldiers, but attendants on the hunt, an inferior kind of shikarrie. In the battle pieces we sometimes see the eunuchs attached to the king’s person fighting at his elbow.