Note 189 — Chapter II · SCULPTURE. (continued 2)

These caged lions are only found in the bas-reliefs of Assurbanipal. The number of lions killed between the eleventh and seventh centuries B.C. must have been something extraordinary. Tiglath-Pileser I. boasts in one of his inscriptions of having done eight hundred lions to death. In time they must have become rare in Assyria. They must then have been brought from Chaldæa or Susiana, where they have always been more abundant, and transported to the north in carts, cages and all, there to afford sport for the king. In our day lions are hardly to be found higher up the Tigris than Bagdad; but on the Euphrates they occur much farther north, as far as Bir and all over the valley of the Khabour (Layard, Nineveh, vol. ii. p. 48). They are most numerous in the marshes of the lower Euphrates, where they were hunted in boats by the kings of Assyria (Rawlinson, The Five Great Monarchies, vol. i. pp. 361 and 508). Most of the lions of Mesopotamia have very little mane, but a few have been encountered here and there in which that feature is largely developed. These seem to have been chosen as models by the Assyrian artists.