[96] At Semil, to the north of Mossoul, Layard saw the Yezidi chief, “Abde Agha, seated in the gate, a vaulted entrance with deep recesses on both sides, used as places of assembly for business during the day, and as places of rest for guests during the night.”--_Discoveries_, p. 57. [97] PLACE, _Ninive_, vol. i. p. 186. [98] It is even believed that the Assyrians used a machine for launching great stones, like the Roman catapult. The representations in the bas-reliefs are not, however, very clear. RAWLINSON, _The Five Great Monarchies_, vol. i. p. 472. [99] PLACE, _Ninive_, vol. i. p. 196. Causeways of this kind may be noticed stretching away from the tower in our Fig. 29. See also LAYARD, _Monuments_, 2nd series, plates 18 and 21. [100] A few terra-cotta statuettes have certainly been found, but these seem to be idols rather than images of the defunct. [101] The ordinary and principal office of the human-headed bull, was to guard the doors of temples and palaces, but in his _rôle_ of protecting genius, other functions were included. Thus, in a bas-relief representing Sargon’s campaigns in Phœnicia, we find a bull that seems to be walking on the sea. With Anon, Oannes, or Dagon, the fish-god, he presides over the journeys of the ships that bring cargoes of wood from Lebanon (BOTTA, _Monument de Ninive_, plate 32). [102] M. LENORMANT has collected these texts in his _Origines de l’Histoire_, vol. i. p. 115. [103] This must represent one of the favourite rites of the Chaldæo-Assyrian religion, allusion to it is made in the passage given as a letter of Jeremiah (BARUCH vi. 25): “Now shall ye see in Babylon gods of silver, and of gold, and of wood, borne upon shoulders, which cause the nations to fear.” [104] CHABOUILLET (_Catalogue général des Camées de la Bibliothèque nationale_, No. 754) proposes to recognize in the scene here represented the offering of his nightly spouse to Bel in his temple at Babylon (HERODOTUS, i. 181). M. LENORMANT agrees with this interpretation (_Essai de commentaire des Fragments de Bérose_, p. 374). MÉNANT, on the other hand, thinks it as little justified as that which finds the early scenes of Genesis--the temptation of Eve, and the eating of the forbidden fruit--reproduced upon the cylinders (_Remarques sur un cylindre du Musée Britannique, in the Comptes rendus de l’Académie des Inscriptions_, 1879, pp. 270–286). [105] In the great stone torso of which we shall speak presently (p. 98), these details seem to have been omitted; at least no trace of them is to be found on the stone; but they may have been added in paint. In figures of men the Assyrians very rarely indicated the male organs. One of the personages sculptured on the Balawat gates affords an exception to this general practice, but he is a prisoner about to be put to death, and the detail in question is a kind of indignity meant by the sculptor to show that the man in question was a savage who fought in _puris naturalibus_.